“Say goodbye to your DVD player and Tivo box? Perhaps, if one analyst’s predictions come true — they could be replaced by the ubiquitous iPod, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who issued a research note predicting products in Apple’s pipeline,” Amanda Cantrell writes for CNN/Money. “While predicting what products the notoriously secretive Apple is going to launch next can lead normally rational analysts into flights of ‘wild speculation,’ as Munster put it, he believes the company is gunning to be the consumer hub for digital media — and that it’s got a foundation in place to do that.”

“Muster said that within five years, Apple could release an iPod with one terabyte of storage — that’s almost 17 times the maximum amount of iPod storage Apple currently offers,” Cantrell writes. “Munster envisions a one terabyte iPod as a portable, ‘coffee table’ media center that would allow users to store hundreds of movies and thousands of photos and songs. Munster wrote that fellow Piper Jaffray analyst Les Santiago, who covers data storage technologies, thinks Apple could feasibly release a $500, one terabyte iPod in the next five years.”

“Last month, Apple unveiled the widely-anticipated video-enabled iPod that allows users to download and play music videos, home movies, and one of five shows from ABC and Disney, including ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Lost,’ from its iTunes Internet music store. What’s more, they can watch content downloaded onto the video iPod on a normal television. Within a month, Apple sold one million videos and short films through iTunes,” Cantrell writes. “But Apple’s already facing stiff competition in the nascent new market, as CBS and NBC announced earlier this week plans to let viewers buy episodes of some of its programs on demand through their television sets at $0.99 per episode, a buck cheaper than what Apple is charging customers to download episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Lost.’”

Full article, including Apple-branded ‘iPhone’ speculation, here.

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Actually, Apple is already facing weak competition. The CBS and NBC plans are wholly not portable and evaporate in a week (there goes your dollar, if you miss it) – NBC and CBS program offerings will only be available until the following week’s episode airs. Apple’s ABC shows are portable, unlimited, and can be played on Macs, Windows PCs, iPods and any screen to which you wish to output.

“Stiff competition?” Excuse us for laughing. Is that anything like “iPod killer?” We’ve heard it all before from the likes of Rio (defunct), Virgin Electronics (out of the MP3 player business), Olympus (out of the MP3 player business), Creative (no longer concentrating on their self-declared MP3 player “war,” but on staying in business), BuyMusic (defunct), Napster (couldn’t compete in a la carte downloads, trying subscription plans to rent music), Real (ditto), Yahoo (ditto), Microsoft (ditto), and on and on and on.

Apple has already sold over one million videos in less than their first 20 days of operation. That was without hardly any 5G video-capable iPods in people’s hands. If you’re going to write that “Apple’s facing stiff competition,” how about providing some proof? Apple sold one million iPod nano units in the first 17 days of availability. The video-capable iPod has been out now for one month as of tomorrow. It’s a sure bet that Apple’s sold well in excess of one million units, most likely, they’ve already sold around two million units. Apple has over ten million credit card accounts signed up on iTunes. These are all facts that support the statement that Apple is not facing stiff competition. Cantrell offers nothing to support her claim of “stiff competition.”

Users can only buy a handful of select NBC shows if you happen to own a DirecTV Plus DVR. Why buy a show if you can record it for free on the DVR that you need to have in order to buy the content? Maybe if you miss one, but that amounts to precious few sales. A select few of CBS shows are available to Comcast subscribers using Comcast’s On Demand service. Neither service is portable – they’re tied to the respective boxes – and they’re gone for good in less than a week. These are not “stiff competition” that Apple faces, they are weak jokes from dinosaurs who haven’t yet figured out how to get Steve Jobs on the phone. Both NBC and CBS will get onto iTunes eventually. There are just way too many iPods being sold and far too many copies of iTunes being downloaded and used for both networks not to do so.

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