Apple’s new players are hot sellers, judging from the more than 1 million video downloads so far,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek. “Just one problem: Is demand outpacing supply?”
Hesseldahl writes, “In its early weeks on the market, Apple’s latest digital-media player is meeting with success — so much so, that demand may be outstripping supply. Apple Computer said on Oct. 31 that customers have snapped up more than 1 million of the video downloads that are playable on the company’s video iPod, which hit the market two weeks ago. Some investors took the announcement as a suggestion that uptake of the new units is strong. Apple’s share price jumped $3.12, or 5.7%, to $57.59 by market close on Oct. 31.”
Hesseldahl writes, “Apple hasn’t yet said how many of the new players it has sold since the units started shipping Oct. 17, but clues are mounting that there simply aren’t enough around. It’s taking Apple between five and seven business days to fill online orders for the video iPod, according to the company’s Web site. ‘They can’t seem to build them fast enough,’ says analyst Shaw Wu of American Technology Research in San Francisco. It’s taking the company 1 to 3 days to fill orders for the 4-gigbyte nano and about 24 hours for the 2-gigabyte version as well as the smaller Shuffles.”
Hesseldahl writes, “if you were to assume each new iPod owner has downloaded between 5 and 10 videos, you would probably arrive at a number somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 units sold in the iPod’s first few weeks on the market.”
Full article here.
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Hessedahl fails to include the number of video downloads by iTunes Music Store (iTMS) customers who don’t own 5th generation video-capable iPods. Just as you don’t need an iPod to listen to music purchased via Apple’s iTMS, you don’t need a new iPod to watch the videos. They play right in iTunes via QuickTime on Macs and Windows PCs and that video content, by the way, can also be outputted to monitors and TVs.
Related article:
Report: Extremely strong demand seen for Apple iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle units – October 31, 2005
Enjoying Apple’s iTunes and iTunes Music Store without owning an iPod – May 11, 2005