Apple Computer could sell 21 million iPod shuffle units in 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:53 AM EST"Global sales of portable digital music players are expected to rise significantly this year, the world's second-largest manufacturer of MP3 players said on Tuesday. 'This market is booming rapidly and one of the reasons why MP3s are so popular is that they are becoming cheaper,' said Tommy Tsai, a product marketing manager at Creative Technology Ltd.'s Taiwan branch. Tsai, citing estimates from market research firm IDC, told a seminar in Taipei that Creative and its rivals, including South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and U.S.-based Apple Computer Inc., would collectively sell 35 million portable flash MP3 players in 2005, compared with 25 million in 2004," Reuters reports.
"Apple is the leader in the mini hard disk-drive (HDD) music player market, with a roughly 60 to 70 percent share, following the success of its market-leading iPod, which can store tens of thousands of songs, compared with hundreds for regular MP3 players," Reuters reports. "Seeking to capitalize on the high-growth market, Apple moved earlier this month to offer more affordable products by introducing the gum-stick size iPod shuffle, with 512 megabytes of memory, for US$99. The price is similar to that of rivals."
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: "The price is similar to that of rivals?" Please, someone find us a Samsung or Creative MP3 player that's 512MB for US$99 or 1GB for US$149 like Apple's iPod shuffles. We can't seem to locate any with "similar prices" to Apple's iPod shuffle
models. Now, let's see 35 million portable flash MP3 players times 60 percent equals about 21 million iPod shuffle
units sold for 2005. Wonder if Apple could keep up with that sort of demand?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple says up to 4-week wait for iPod Shuffle; initial stockpile rumored at 2 million units - January 18, 2005
Smith Barney analyst expects Apple to sell 22 million 'iPod flash' units over next two years - December 10, 2004

I don't think they'll do 21 million, but it'll be close. More like 15 million. But hey, I've been wrong before. (Mac Mini anyone?)
Brought to you by "later", as in when we'll know if this is true.