“Piper Jaffray maintained an ‘outperform’ rating and $27 price target on Seagate Technology after the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings release,” Forbes reports. According to Piper, “‘One concern is that Apple Computer may increase the flash-based iPod mix thus reducing MP3 hard disk-drive consumption.’ Piper believes that Seagate’s guidance accounts for this shift. ‘We continue to believe that [Seagate] stock offers a great value to investors,’ concluded the research firm.”
Full article here.
First of all,
I don’t think the Shuffle will steal sales from the iPod. People who buy the shuffle will
really use it for exercise or other activities when you don’t want to carry a lot.
Screens are useful in the iPod
to most people.
People will buy the Shuffle
over other flash based music players.
Seagate should not be nervous about
the Shuffle.
AL: And what will an iPod shuffle look like 6 months from now? Never underestimate the power of evolution
True, but the same applies to Seagate HD capacity.
If the rumors are true about a video iPod or media station, more HD capacity will be needed.
Personally, I would like to be able to store video in the iPod, carry it around and “dock” it into a media station which I can then view the video on a TV. A 2″ screen is too small for me.
people need to think (or read) vertically
It is a slow day.
I think a lot of iPod owners will buy a Shuffle as a secondary device.
For example, I would never take my full-size iPod snowboarding, regardless of skip protection. It’s too easy to crack the screen and I notice moisture tends to condense under the screen as the iPod moves from hot to cold environments.
A screenless, all ABS plastic el cheapo Shuffle, on the other hand, is perfect for activities like snowboarding, skateboarding, and extreme sports. Do you really want to mount a regular iPod on your handlebars on that serious mountain-biking run and risk the damage in a tumble?
The low price of the Shuffle makes it a necessary “second iPod,” just like many people have an expensive dress watch and a rugged sports watch.
I think what they mean is that flash-based Shuffle will eventually hold the same capacity as the current iPod minis once NAND prices come down enough. Switching an entire line of iPods from HD’s to flash would, clearly, affect Seagate. Of coure, for the near term, Apple would just continue to up the capacity of the minis to differentiate them from the Shuffle, so perhaps there wouldn’t be much of a lost market opportunity for Seagate after all. We’ll see…
AL: And what will an iPod shuffle look like 6 months from now? Never underestimate the power of evolution
—-
dude, this would be a huge nod to Sony.. they have done a great job with their portable (though, overpriced) flash player..
whatever frickin LED shit it uses for a display..
have that on the shuffle in like 4 different colours(different models) of LED to match the ipod mini line (white face, as it is now)…
seems pretty obvious to me.. unless apple really hates having to create a display w that..
T
H
I
N
K
V
E
R
T
I
C
A
L
Apple’s new motto?
as a seagate employee, i can tell you that they are not very worried about this scenario. larger capacity flash drives will appear as microdrives increase in size as well. 200 gig ipods, 50 gig ipod minis, and 5-10 gig shuffles are likely to be the incarnations by ’07. the spread of CE HDs will benefit everybody, seagate, apple, and everyone else.
“whatever frickin LED shit it uses for a display..”
It uses OLED (as modern as you can get) and the info ‘magically’ appears through the casing. It’s pretty slick, and if it worked with the iTMS, I might have gotten it.
I would think that the most likely scenario would be that the iPod mini will be shifted over the flash based memory, thereby killing the 1″ sales from Seagate. It could be that the 2Gb and 4Gb shuffles reported a while ago are in fact going to be the next gen minis. And I suspect that in doing this Apple would be able to make the form factor about half the thinkness it is today. It may even be they will run the models in parallel, keeping a full thinkness mini with an 8Gb HD and then two sport models, half the height with solid state durability. Just a thought.
Tim Coughlin
http://timcoughlin.typepad.com