“Merrill Lynch said Apple Computer will likely introduce two new offshoots of its popular iPod MP3 player by the first half of 2005. ‘We believe Apple could introduce a flash memory-based iPod in the first quarter of 2005,’ it said. ‘The new iPod would signal a departure from the thinking that an iPod should hold all a person’s songs. We estimate that Apple might be able to charge $149 for a 256 MB (60 song) unit. We think Apple could quickly become a significant player in the fragmented $2.6 billion flash MP3 market,'” Forbes reports.
“The research firm said iPod sales (2 million units) comprised 23% of total revenue last quarter. ‘We look for 2.7 million to be sold during the Christmas quarter, a potentially conservative estimate given that Hewlett-Packard only took 120,000 units last quarter and component provider Synaptics expressed a strong outlook.’ In addition, Merrill Lynch said a photo iPod may be released in the near future. ‘Since iPods are already being used as portable hard drives (HDDs) for files, we believe a Photo iPod is likely to be announced, perhaps in the first half of next year,’ the firm said,” Forbes reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: More bad news for Microsoft and their quest to litter the world’s hard drives with Windows Media Audio files. Oh, happy day!
