“Apple sold out of iPods during its 2004 first quarter, shipping 733,000 players and booking $256 million in revenue. That’s nearly 13% of Apple’s $2 billion in sales for the quarter, up more than 200% from the same period a year ago, when Apple sold $81 million worth of iPods,” Tim Beyers writes for The Motley Fool. “Interestingly, demand probably hasn’t come close to peaking. In early January, Apple inked a deal with Hewlett-Packard allowing HP to resell its own branded music player based on the iPod and to include iTunes with the nearly 16 million consumer-oriented personal computers it sells each year.”
Beyers writes, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of this announcement. Apple’s iPod and iTunes music store were doing well before HP came into the picture. In fact, Apple admits its first quarter — which was already a huge success — could have been better if it had adequately met global demand for its music players. Now, with its order backlog, the new Mini, and the new HP channel, it seems that anything less than 3 million iPods sold during fiscal ’04 would be a major disappointment. Four million seems likely. How would that translate into revenue? Let’s do the math: According to its latest earnings report, Apple averaged $349 in revenue per iPod sold. If prices remain stable,
1. iChat for Windows – Yes, Please. So I can connect with my poor deluded windoze friends and family and try to convince them directly to switch from the virus ridden dark side
2. Color Screen for iPod so you could view pics that you have downloaded from your camers – Not essential but it WOULD be cool
3. Equivalent of Video Head phones – THIS IS IT!!! The new NEXT INSANELY GREAT THING. How about a pair of sunglasses-like arangement that you could view full screen video on???? Stuff like this already exists and if they did it right that would be SO COOL!! Then a Video iPod would make sense.