“While U.S. shoppers had no problem getting theirs, in most of Europe the digital music players were scarce before Christmas,” Carol Matlack and Matt Vella write for BusinessWeek. “Major retailers in France and Germany started running out of nanos in mid-December, and many are still waiting for fresh supplies of the most popular model, the black 4-gigabyte… While Apple hasn’t yet reported fourth-quarter sales, it’s already clear that the iPod was one of this holiday season’s megahits. Citigroup Global Markets analyst Richard Gardner recently raised his estimate of fourth-quarter iPod shipments to 12.5 million, up an astounding 173% from the year-earlier quarter. That’s based on zooming sales of the nano, and stronger-than-expected demand for the recently introduced fifth-generation iPod, which can play videos as well as handle music and photos.”
“Did Apple, by underestimating demand, lose millions in potential sales? In Europe, supplies started dwindling well before Christmas. By Dec. 15, bloggers on http://www.macbidouille.com, a French site for Macintosh aficionados, were reporting that Apple France had warned merchants that it had run out of iPods and could not guarantee further deliveries for the holiday season. Outlets of Germany’s two biggest electronics retailers, MediaMarkt and Saturn, report that stocks ran out in early December and haven’t yet been replenished,” Matlack and Vella write. “Even if Apple lost out on some pre-Christmas sales, it can take consolation in the fact that most disappointed customers didn’t settle for competing brands. Mathieu Charpentier, who heads the digital-music department at the Champs Elysées FNAC, says he gave up trying to persuade shoppers to buy music players made by other manufacturers. ‘We can’t sell a customer who wants an iPod another player,’ he says. Maybe if European shoppers are very, very good, they’ll get their nanos by Easter.”
Full article here.
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