iRiver’s global home page currently sports an interesting animated image of a blonde woman model alternating with a dark-haired male model each of whom are pictured biting into, you guessed it, an apple.
In September 2004, iRiver held 18.8% of the flash-based music player market of according to NPD World. This was, of course, before the Apple entered the flash-based player market with last week’s debut of the iPod shuffle (currently sporting a 4-week wait even with the initial iPod shuffle stockpile rumored to have been 2 million units). In the same report, Apple held 87.3% of the hard drive-based music player market while iRiver weighed in with 1.5%.
Do something that not many have done before and visit iRiver’s home page here: http://www.iriver.com/
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple says up to 4-week wait for iPod Shuffle; initial stockpile rumored at 2 million units – January 18, 2005
iRiver CEO on Apple iPod shuffle: ‘It will be very difficult for users to find their favorite songs’ – January 17, 2005
My my – it’s worth a read through their forum too! I stabbed iPod into the search…
here
it was probably the brain child of a MS apologist.
—The magic word is “death”, my prediction for this ad campaign when conservative Christians get wind of it.
Actually, it’s targeted to clerics though they can’t simultaneously listen to choirboys while they watch and PMP.
Hey, I decided. Good idea. I’ll go see what the opposition is up to…
So I get to this site, and it takes ~10 seconds for the Macromedia nonsense to finish. Then I have to figure out what to do. OK. I guess they want me to click on “America”. Now, I know we Canadians are a bit sensitive on this issue. I know that geographically speaking we are “Americans”. We might even tolerate a button labelled “Americas”. But restricting the choice to America does not make iRiver any Canadian friends.
Bad start, but lets continue.
Holy smokes! What should I do now? Well… how about “Products”?
What the fsck? Do I want to look at Ultra Portable Players, or Audio Jukebox Players (what the fsck is an Audio Jukebox?), or maybe Multimedia Players?
Fsck. This is too much work. I’m gonna see if anything else is happening an MDN.
I amend a submission I made earlier:
Game. Set. Match. Contact Rio, Creative, and iRiver for some prime real estate coming vacant soon.
I see lots of iriver products in Akihabara and have even met a few people who have bought them. When I was in Korea they even had a lounge in the airport where you could try out their products while you waited.
They aren’t bad but sometimes lack “Duh” features. Like the inability to scroll or skip through a video. You can leave it at the place you were watching and turn it off and start at that place again but if you do anything else then you have to start at the beginning and watch it all over again. So if you were 30 minutes into a video and then wanted to listen to music and finish the video later you would have to watch the first same 30 minutes all over again.
I can’t see Apple doing something so stupid if they ever implement video in the iPod (which I think they will). iRiver throws in lots of features though; which appeals to the gadget freak in me. However, I think for mass appeal the simplicity of the iPod was a stroke of genius and helped result in the emotion associated with the iPod that Tera mentions. I think we have a very large and building core of “iPod faithful” who will not abandon their iPods easily (and who may actually be the majority for once). Apple is really finessing these guys with the iPod shuffle and its size, price point, and cool factor though. iRiver must be having nightmares with giant attacking apples in them.
OK, so iRiver sucks. I’m an Apple guy. Not that I can switch to a non iPod at this point since I have spent about 3 grand at the iTMS–but I knew what I was getting into.
But, after looking at this web ad, Apple better get their act together:
Beautiful color screen
Ability to show pictures
5 gig hard drive
12 hour battery life
FM tuner
Ability to record FM radio
Removable batter.
The mini or regular iPod lacks most if not all of these features.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPods, but Apple can’t pull a TiVo and stop meaningful innovation. The design and experience is still second to none, but the TiVo interface is also peerless. Apple needs to get up with the Jones, without sacrificing all the makes the iPod magic.
ok, so I looked at the ad too, specifically the N10-105 (stupid name loses points right away). it looks decent enough but that’s the only thing that scores positive points. Transfer rate is limited to USB 1.1 which is way to slow even with only a hundred or so songs. But the price of $250 is just outrageous. Suddenly the iPod mini sounds cheap. the $99 price tag on the shuffle just going to give these guys a chance. Putting an apple on the ad isonly going to give more recognition to Apple. It will serve to remind anyone that accidentally wanders to the iRiver webpage that there is an alternative.
I reckon someone should track down these models, and see what portable mp3 player they own/use!?
As a betting man, my money would be on an iPod.
Even if they don’t own an mp3 player – ask them which one they would like – again bet the answer would be iPod!
I’d love to see those models quoted as saying something like – “hey it was a paycheck – but as if I’d own an iRiver!?”
I want the red one. Sexy!
I have a feeling that this ad will backfire on them. Whoever came up with the concept didn’t think it all the way through. Both models seem to be enjoying their apple which sends the subliminal message that the if you buy an iPod, you’ll enjoy your Apple too. Duh! They should have been grimacing. Amateurs.
Absolutely pathetic!
Iriver know they can’t compete with Apple so they produce a subliminal stab at apple.
The image is obviously done to imply that iriver are ‘eating into Apple’s music market share’ – which they are not.
Iriver are the cheap and low market throw away brand – They’re products are as fresh a a moldy piece of fruit!
It’s good to see all the dirty tactics starting to come out from Apple’s competitors.
If they want Apple to open up Itunes to other players, then they just shot themselves in the foot – SJ won’t do it now – certainly not with Iriver anyway.
Somone told Iriver that SEX SELLS!
The blonde hammer thrower in “1984” was a looker I seem to remember.
the products actually look nice… the user interface is what sucks. Why can´t companies use real designers…?
OMG try It the interface sucks, many digital cameras are not supported including all Canon and All with built in memory. Some cameras will only work with cards above a certain size and most multi and some single slot card readers wont work. Not to mention the second time you copy a folder the iriver will refuse as the folder now already exists.
The PMP also tries to tell you how to use it with an inbuilt help system and it is still impossible.
Screen quality is good and WMP is supported though:/
There are workarounds for many of these problems, but I sell these things in a camera store (Actually my colleagues sell them, I just have to spend hours showing people who have bought them how they work and trying to prevent them wanting a refund). If money hasn’t been laid down I always tell people to go buy an ipod if they want a decent easy to use music player and a FlashTrax or similar if they want an image bank.
The last time I recorded FM radio was in 8th Grade! What a POINTLESS feature! Plus i can get an FM tuner in my pen! FM radio is not a selling point, its mostly crap anyway, especially when you have your entire music collection at your fingertips. Pointless features dont make a good product folks.
I agree that the direct plugging in of a dig camera is a good idea, Im just waiting for a smart camera company to make the right plug and work with apple to make it work with the iPod Photos.
What iRiver (hmm… where’d they get the idea for that name?) doesn’t realize is that those apples are most likely Red Delicious and not Macintosh. Tee Hee Hee
Nice. iRiver subliminally advertising Apple iPods. It’s iRiver that’s giving Apple free mindshare advertising–not the other way ’round.
tera, you forgot the fact that apple will give us a taste of 10.5 before longhorn too. bengal tiger, snow leapard, sabertooth, whatever.
which is totally irrelevant to this article.
“Cry me a iRiver”
LOL! love that… love it.