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This won't sell...what we need is a way to rent songs more.

this is called PRICE DIFFERENTIATION..

maximizing profits by having many price points..

however.. the 4GIG iPod mini is pretty small..

How much lower could they go.. they've already said it isn't gonna get much lower than 4 gig

Haven't you heard the old adage, "Why rent when you can buy!"

what was the expectation of the 1G ipod?

then

what was the expectation of the mini before it appeared?

I Know! They will put the player in the ear buds! Everybody will be saying "Where did the player go?"

But seriously, if Apple enters this market expect something elegant and aimed at a different section of the market than iPods somehow.

Lexar (LEXR) produces a flash chip that holds 8 GB. That may be too expensive for a flash iPod, but it could certainly sport more than 1 GB.

Full disclosure: I just bought some LEXR so I'm encouraging everybody to buy a bunch of it before the rush, so I can become filthy stinking rich with your money. Thank you in advance.

1GB player for $99.

If they come in different colors ala the mini and the price is right - say $99, look for some people to buy multiple players. I'd think it would hold a minimum of 200 songs. It's getting awful late to take advantage of the Holiday Season. It needs to be unveiled in the next two weeks or so and since the mini is now readily available, the timing may be right. Hopefully, they'll have enough to meet demand. There are plenty of pre-teens to buy this kind of product. Of course, this story may not be true.

The thing is that the firm that broke the story has a vested interest in the company that is going to be doing business with Apple.

Is it possible that they are trying to hype the stock a bit.

I can see Apple going for a flash based pod with 4 gigs of space, but the cost could be prohibitive at the moment.

I don't think they would go for a 1 gig offering, UNLESS they really think it will make more money and not cut into the mini pod segment.

Every iPod ever made has flash memory in to to provide anti-skip and prolong battery life. The new 60 Gigger coming out this December needs this also. If the flash memory holds 1 hr of music the battery for the new player will last even longer.

Why would Apple make a flash memory only player?

SigmaTel makes controller chips, not storage chips as far as I can ascertain based on their site description. They just announced a deal with Rio. The chip helps control both flash and hard disk MP3 players and according to their site, offers up to 50 hours of battery life.

Seems as if this story has a bit of confusion to it.

http://sigmatel.com/

What another overpriced music you own player....

Please the future is in a pocket video player...

...for music and movies that you rent from Microsoft.

Any way the era of the Ipod is over soon the "real IT world" will be banning them from the corporate networks for security reasons.

©

So much for the iPod mini taking the flash player market! Proof that it was overpriced, if Apple are now considering a cheaper flash based player to compete in that sector instead...

sputnik was a primitive satellite that went "beep". It appears Sputnik has just about the same level of contribution to intelligent debate around here.

If this was true, wouldn't it be at risk for cancellation since the supplier leaked the news?

We all know how much SJ hates leaks.

The whole story is bogus. It's not about a flash player, it's about a solid state controller that is used in the iPods (and players from Rio as well). Next story...... SegmaTel doesn't make solid state flash memory. The author of the original story got his facts wrong.

iPod card: think "credit card calculator". The same size as a credit card, but a tad bit thicker. The display will not be back lit, but it will have the same menu and scroll-wheel. The "card" will come with an adapter sleeve so it can be inserted into any iPod connector. The battery, accounting for half of the players thickness, will last 24 hours. This 2 Gb (500 songs) , $99, high quality player will be the hottest music player AND portable "harddrive". Apple's initial stock of 500,000 units (an estimated 2 month of sales) will actually sell out within 2 weeks.

Other such micro FireWire devices will make CDs and DVDs obsolete within a year, as Apple introduces the $10 FireCard: 2Gb Flash RAM with built in Firewire 800 port.

The original iPod was 5GB. So the current iPod mini is essentially just a smaller, nicer version of the original iPod. Its storage only seems low in comparison with the iPod because of the growth in its capacity to the range of 20-40GB. The capacity of the iPod mini will likely grow a bit over time, as well.

If high-capacity solid-state memory become cheap enough to justify a 1+GB player, then Apple will likely produce one. After all, some people are willing to pay more for reduced size even though it provides less capacity, as well. The iPod mini is a good example of size over capacity.

iEarings?

I would be surprised if they went lower than 1000 songs.

The original iPod was 1000 songs. The mini is 1000 songs. (This is despite dripping the capacity by 20%, because AAC had replaced MP3 by then).

When solid state memory gets cheap enough to offer a 1000 song player, I don't see why Apple wouldn't come on board with Flash.

I know a few people who are waiting for high capacity solid state players. I don't think they care who makes it.

pkradd,

The article says that SigmaTel will provide Controller Chips for a soon to be released music player from Apple which is rumored to "use solid-state flash memory".

Nowhere in the article does it state that SigmaTel will provide the flash memory.

Granted this doesn't prove that the "rumor" is true, but you can't claim that an article is "bogus" just because you decide to make assumptions that were never even implied in the original article.

Al, that's not true:

Every iPod ever made has flash memory in to to provide anti-skip and prolong battery life.

No, they don't. iPods don't need any flash memory. Flash memory is designed to be nonvolatile, persistent memory. It costs more than ordinary RAM. Why on earth would anybody, let alone Apple, not some inexperienced hardware-design company, use costly Flash RAM for buffer memory?

A new $149 iPod with 4-GB Lexar Flash-RAM would absolutely kick arse. That would be a good time for the $249 mini to bump up to an 8-GB microdrive, and the larger iPods to increase capacity as well.

iPod Tiny would have one feature that no other flash based player does: iTunes Music Store compatibility. Apple could make more money from the music sales than from the hardware.

Speaking of hardware, due to the small capacities of flash memory, the screen resolution could be half of the iPod Mini; browsing a small library could be done in as little as three lines of text.

The click wheel could be seperated from the main body, much like the current iPod Remote. With a small library users would get in the habit of shuffling their music so click and forget would be the way to use this thing.

The dock connector would not be necessary. A mini USB port would save space and provide enough electricity to recharge the Tiny battery.

Apple Lossless support could be dropped from the firmware of the iPod Tiny. There would be too little space for lossless files and the battery would drain quicker. Besides, the environments where a flash player would likely be used would not be ideal for uncompromised audio quality.

Last but not least, if the iPod Tiny is cheap enough it could be included as a bonus with every new Mac purchase. A bonus like that would pay for itself in online music sales or if it convinces people to buy the full-size iPods.

iPod express?

or the iPod will be re-branded as iPod extreme?

doesn't the world change quickly? only less than 10 months ago, Jobs, was going on and on on how shit flash players were. Even when the iPod started, Apple was doing it based on hard disks because its better than flash.

but lucky SOME mac users have a brain. flash players suck. the future IS hdd based players. and isn't apple suppose to be forward looking?

i Don't want iPods to be confused with $50 jobs that you can get at any old cheap PC store. I don't want apple to have the 99% market. It like it how it is right now. Its a special item, just like how the Mac is. Sure, mac market COULD go up, but like iPods, i don't want it dominate. selfish as it may sound but i just don't want everyone to have an iPod.

any how much can u actually profit from shitty cheap players like this? its rumored that apple earns $150 usd per iPod, but how much can flash players get? no way near as much, or people won't buy it.

i hope this report is fake, like nearly all "analysts" reports.

...and don't forget about Bluetooth connectivity.

It's a good point though - who the hell really needs a 60gb iPod? Smaller and cheaper is the way. There's no need for Apple to compete with the MS all-in-one brick. Less is more. 'It's about the music, stupid'

In an earlier post I was raving about some new 8-GB Flash, but the article I was looking at was wrong. It's not 8-GB (gigabytes); it's 8-Gb (gigabits), or 1-GB. That seems small for a player.

On the other hand, if a new 1-GB Flash iPod comes out for $99 or $149 in time for Christmas, it may just be enough to stop people from buying other crummy Flash players, so that they'll use iTunes Music Store, so that when they update they'll buy a more capable iPod instead of a more capable Sony or WinCE contraption.

Sum Yung Gai - please get your facts right. It's 8GByte, not 8Gbit in the news a the moment.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/30/8gb_flash_card/

There's some confusion about whether the skip buffer is regular RAM or flash RAM. I read that it was flash when they were first released (this makes sense as far as quick starting from sleep), but there doesn't seem to be much hard evidence either way.

http://www.ipodlounge.com/ipodnews_comments.php?id=5042_0_7_0_M

Apologies as you'd already corrected while I was posting.

I still don't see Apple releasing a player under 1000 songs (currently 4GB). But I do see them releasing this as a flash player when the time is right.

If you have a flash based mini for $50 more, but has a 40 hour battery life, or is even thinner and lighter, then that's pretty compelling.

But Apple are waiting for the technology to be ready rather than releasing a flawed device.

Apple_Master,

You are correct in that the article does say "controller chips." But at the same time the company announced they were supplying same for Rio computers and not Apple, in a press release. From a time standpoint, this product - as I said in an earlier post, would have to come out NOW. With Apple finally getting caught up with mini iPod production it seems to me that offering a competing product would not be to their advantage at this time. SigmaTel may have been supplying these chips all along to Apple. Think Secret reports that two companies now manufacture iPods for Apple (so the supply of 'pods for HP will be sufficent). The analyst may have gotten wind of that and simply hypothesized that a new product was coming along when it was just an INCREASED supply of chips that Apple needed. It wouldn't be the first time such reports turned out to be false.

removable flash cards would be better...

then you could make the ipod tiny whatever size you wanted...

use compact flash or SD cards just like digital cameras...

even better would be having stack together modules contain the flash cards like a deck of playing cards, so you could daisy chain multiple modules together. The more cards the thicker the deck/ipod. You could a different playlist on each card

developing such technology that is reliable and cheap enough isn't probably worth it. Unless the share the idea between future multiple apple products (music player, camera, pda, etc)

next to no chance of this actually happening though...

If the recent past is any indication, Apple wouldn't have removeable flash cards. The device would surely be about the size of a Bose wave radio remote.... perhaps.

I was in the local Apple Store yesterday and people were coming in buying mini iPods (and iMac G5s, and iBooks, and....). They had plenty of minis in stock. Many were fathers and mothers buying the mini for their kids who were with them. One 10 year old girl was literally jumping up and down when her mother told her she could have a mini. She chose pink.

Who needs 60 gigs?
As a news photographer, I would love to be able to download images to the iPod. Unfortunately 650kb/sec (Belkin device) is way to slow... this results in a transfer time of between 3 and 5 minutes for a full 128MB card. These days 1 gig cards fill up quickly.
Reporters are using iPods for recording interviews.
With the address book & iCal info in one's pocket, I look at the iPod as a potenial work tool that plays music as a bonus.

Man does history repeat itself on the Mac boards.....

When the rumored mini was out there...everyone was saying 199...149..99...only to be disappointed by the 249 price tag.

Lets face it, if they do release a 1GB player, it's going to be 129 minimum. That's just the way apple pricing works.

Or $179...

Or, $1299

Anyone know how well Microsoft's PMC (Personal Media Center) is selling these days? I’ve been on the edge of my seat waiting to read about the hordes of satisfied Windows users.

PMC = Perfectly Mediocre Crap
PMC = Petty Market Capture
PMC = Performs Miserably Completely
PMC = Probably Microsoft’s Coffin

What is it with you people thinking that since price on flash memory is dropping and that it will be soon cheaper than HD storage...Do you also think one day you'll be older than your parents?

Guess what, HD prices are dropping too... at an equal or faster rate. Apple will drop the price of the 4gig Mini to 199$ and then 149$ and that's all they'll do on the lower end. In 5-10 years things could change but iPods will remain HD player for the next few years I'm pretty sure.

The issue is really form and function, not price. The question is can Apple do something "different?"-- because they tend not to recycle other people's crap.

If flash drives offer something that other means don't... expect a product. If flash means rebranded shinola... um... probably not.

It will be nice if Apple makes a small...tiny, flash based iPod. Thing is it would have to have a decent amount of storage. 1GB would be pusing the too small limit, but I might be biased when I say this considering I use Apple Lossless and ahve a huge music collection. I know a few people that would love a small, low-storage, inexpensive iPod. I'm sure somewhere between 512MB and 2GB is where the new flash iPod will sit. Personally, I'm used to the storage of a 10GB iPod, but many people are turned off by even the iPod mini just because of it's price. I wouldn't get anything smaller than the 4GB iPod, but an even smaller one would allow Apple to own ther entire market even moreso than they do now. It will be interesting to see where the iPod mini will go in terms of size and price once the 'iPod Flash' hits the market.

what would i do with an ipod smaller than my mini? its already small enough to go anyplace.

a flash ipod would be for cheapness maybe not for size.

I'm finding it hard to read my iPod mini display, let alone something even smaller - with an ageing population, the future is the larger size of the windows portable media center which can play everything and also gets you a spare seat on the bus due to its size.

A new iPod doesn't really need to be smaller. It could be thinner though.

A big advantage would be battery life and that there would be no need for anti skip memory. The devices would be naturally more robust too (even though I've never heard of a head crash on an iPod, they're still more likely to fail than a solid state device).

the most reasonable thing to expect is that the iPod mini line will be expanded: one on the lower end, one on the higher end.

A flash-based mini topping out at 1 or 2 gigs would be the new base-model ($150), the current 4 gig mini becomes the middle ($200) and a new 6 or 8 gig one becomes the top end (including remote and carrying case and dock for $250)

A whole new line makes no sense. Why re-invent the wheel when you can just make the wheel smaller?

Can you say AAPL $150?

Id rather have a 60gig HD in my pocket than a pocket full of flash cards. I mean come on, we'er heading back to the dark ages of cassette tapes.

60gigs would be sweet. Some of us do have a tone of music. If you don't thats ok. You can still put a measly 4gigs worth of music on a 60gig if that's all you have and still have a reasonable sized portable HD for other thing. A clone backup of your HD, photos, videos whatever...
I like the idea of room to grow. No good buying a 4gig, and then realising opps I shouldn't have bought that latest whoever CD cause now I need a bigger iPod to fit it on.

why would you want a 1gig player. I'd get tired of listening to the same few songs over and over. who wants the hassel of having to take stuff off and put new stuff on every couple of days. Sheesh, even a blank DVD hold more than 4gigs.

"Sheesh, even a blank DVD hold more than 4gigs"

... and you know how many people have those portable dvd players lying around. C'mon Apple ... use your head already!

/thinks a 1 gig player meets the needs of some of the population (at a low price, obviously)