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Chief Executive Steve Jobs, announcing the new products at the MacWorld exposition on Tuesday, also said that Apple had sold 4.5 million units of its blockbuster iPod in the 2004 holiday quarter.
Apple shares fell nearly 4 percent, as some suggested that the news had been priced into the stock, thanks to widespread rumours ahead of the show.
"There was so much expectation built in for the stock ... I think that the expectations were about as high as they could get for it," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. "I think it was a case of buy on the rumour and sell on the news."
The iPod sales figure was also slightly below some Wall Street forecasts. Banc of America Securities had predicted iPod sales of 4.6 million units in a note on Tuesday. Prudential had predicted 4.25 million units.
Apple said the new "iPod shuffle" was smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and would come in 512 megabyte and 1 gigabyte capacities. The smaller one would hold about 120 songs, Jobs said.
The new iPod falls into a category of music players that use "flash memory," like that found in digital cameras and some portable disk drives, rather than hard drives like the other iPod models.
"We'd like to go after the remaining mainstream flash market," Jobs said, noting that the flash memory-based digital player market is currently highly fragmented. "The products are all pretty much the same."
He also claimed the iPod holds a 65 percent share of the entire market for portable digital music players, up from only 31 percent a year earlier.
Apple said a number of car companies like Mercedes-Benz USA, Volvo, Nissan and Ferrari were working to integrate the iPod line into their car stereo systems.
The "Mac mini" will come in $499 and $599 models. Weighing in at less than 3 pounds and 2 inches tall, the box has digital media ports that let it connect to televisions as well as traditional PC monitors.
Jobs' announcements were awaited eagerly by the Mac faithful worldwide, though they offered no real surprises, unlike in previous years. The new iPod and the smaller Mac were telegraphed by the many online Mac rumour sites in recent weeks, some of which are being sued by Apple for those leaks.
I know it's alot to read but I dont think I can give you a link cause you have to register.
Anyways, I think this is pretty good news and a 1GB iPod would sell loads because it'll be cheap and have resonable memory.
Unless you recharged.
:'}
And I agree.
I think the Zen Micro looks infinitely more sexy.
> Why does everyone assume if you bought an iPod you're a fashion whorre
> yet if you have a Zen you're a true music fan... or something.
Because too many people make comments like, "Oh it's smaller and it looks better."
Compared to all the alternatives the iPod is amazingly inferior. Yet people always use the looks arguement to defend it!
It's not as fun when people defend normal iPods, but it comes into a league of it's own when people try and justify iPod Minis!
> The only Flash-based players I have seen at any level cannot 'select
> song' - you still have to waltz thorugh every one to get to your
> selection.
> The only
> difference is you'll have to recognise the song you want.
Exactly, trying to find a song just by listening is pretty difficult, and pretty much eliminates the point of searching for it. You come to a song but you have no idea where on the playlist you are, so you basically have to skip and listen to the first 10 seconds of every track you come accross to find it. Even if the display is just numbers, you can stil memorise your favourite tracks and skip right to them. You can't say that no screen>screen, its ridiculous.
Fine if it was £30 or whatever, but it's the same price, and it's not as good. All you pay for is a rechargeable battery (you can recharge batteries anyway if you get the right type) and the iTunes compatability, plus the autofill feature.
And yeah, the iPod mini is rubbish.
The software isn't the best thing in the world but then it's still easy to use. Just select the songs you want and click transfer. Then you can create playlists and stuff.
You can also get it to work with Windows Media Player too.