“Apple Computer’s second-generation iPod shuffle
is in extremely high demand this month with sales tracking in excess of 5 million for the quarter, AppleInsider has been told,” Slash Lane reports for AppleInsider.
“People familiar with the matter say Apple executives are thrilled with the strong response to the diminutive 1GB flash-based digital music player, which recently eclipsed the iPod nano by rising to the forefront of the company’s top seller list,” Lane reports.
Lane reports, “The entry-level player is selling out at some resellers faster than Apple can provide fresh stock and, come the close of the holiday shopping season, could account for as many as 6 to 8 million unit sales, those same people claim.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
CNN ridicules Microsoft’s Zune while gushing over Apple’s new iPod shuffle – November 14, 2006
Ars Technica reviews Apple’s 2G iPod shuffle: ‘extremely small, efficient, and well designed’ – November 13, 2006
Apple exec: ‘tremendous’ interest in new 2G iPod shuffle – November 08, 2006
Thurrott reviews Apple’s 2G iPod Shuffle: ‘a wonder of size, weight, and usability – I love it’ – November 05, 2006
Apple 2G iPod Shuffle disassembly guide – November 03, 2006
Reg Hardware reviews 2G Apple iPod shuffle: ‘great grab-and-go gadget for music on the move’ – November 03, 2006
Steve Jobs gives Apple employees new 2G iPod shuffles – November 03, 2006
First 2G iPod shuffle unpacking photos – November 01, 2006
Apple’s new 2G iPod shuffle available worldwide this Friday – October 31, 2006
Apple now shipping 2G iPod shuffle orders – October 30, 2006
AP: Apple’s new iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle ‘clearly worth the wait’ – October 19, 2006
Apple unveils new iPod shuffle: world’s smallest digital music player – September 12, 2006
It’s on its way to being the trendiest iPod yet, by the looks of things.
I still like the original Shuffle though.
hmm.. I wonder why it is so low on the amazon top sellers list?
Maybe it’s one of those impluse buy items that you buy only when you see it sitting next to the cash register at the store?
From what I’ve seen, the nano is doing better than the shuffle is. But hey, if the shuffle is really selling as well as this report says, it’s a good thing.
Thirty.
Million.
I was planning to buy a bunch of them to give to customers as x-mas gifts. There is no better business gift than something that a person can then take home, give to their kids, and be a hero. That $79 buys a lot of goodwill.
i got one
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WHY MDN calls it a 2G iPod?
it’s only 1G!!!
entanglement,
2G stands for 2nd generation. If they were referring to memory they would have said 2GB.
I think they’re gonna sell way more than 6-8 million.
I just don’t understand it. How is it that the market isn’t so saturated yet?
Majikalman.. peolple want more than 1. It’s like computers, you always want the newest/fastest/whatever
ooh it’s late and I can’t spell
Why isn’t the market saturated yet? The market caught wind of the Zune and that put millions of iPod purchases on hold. Microsoft’s remarkably successful marketing of Zune is paying real dividends–I predict more Zunes will be sold than iPods. I’ll bet my Zune points on it. Apple won’t know what hit ’em.
Ask any IT professional or teenager who isn’t tired sharing pictures of themselves partying on myspace what the hot MP3 player is. The future is social networking. The future is squirting. This isn’t some “me too” reaction to a changing marketplace by Microsoft. That’s not their style. Redmond is blazing another yet trail for Apple and the consumer to follow.
Welcome to the Social.
MDN Magic Word: twenty, as in twenty billion Zunes sold this quarter.
And once you tire of “squirting” all over the place and catch a virus from it, you will go out and buy a shuffle.
You will then realize simplicity is better and that spreading microsoft drm and virii is socialy unacceptable.
Think different.
I wonder if Zune Tang is Sputnik’s cousin.
Thanks for hanging around and turning up the sarcasm.
“I just don’t understand it. How is it that the market isn’t so saturated yet?”
1) The are over 5 billion people on this planet, and many people that have so far never had an iPod will eventually get one.
2) Some people like to have one of each iPod category. This particular iPod is good while working out, for example.
3) Many people routinely evolve their iPod lineup. When iPods get better, many people upgrade.
I caught wind once.
This shows why Zune will fail. It doesn’t have a shuffle or nano equivalent, which is where most iPod sales are.
I GOT ONE!
Sure it’s capacity is not nearly as large as my bigger iPods, but holy sheet! just look at the thing.
It just clips right on and holds about 250 songs, it’s totally cool and it’s cheap(er) compared to the higher capacity more fragile models.
By the way MDN In the Harrison Ford movie “Firewall”, he uses his daughters iPod in a hardware hack.
Critic,
I plan to do the same, only for the people who report to me at work. I always buy a little holiday gift to show appreciation for their hard work, and this year’s gift will be the iPod Shuffle. I wonder how many others will be buying these as client or employee gifts, or stock stuffers?
I love that fopr years now, people keep predicting the iPod’s demise. They keep waiting for Apple’s history to repeat, likely because they don’t understand the details of how it occurred.
Steve is aggressively going after/maintaining market share. If Macs continue to expand, expect the same.
Good times, y’all. Good times. Of, except for Peterson under his new pseudonym.
Brilliant innovation never has and never will depend on the approval of the masses; although sometimes, as now, the masses eventually catch on. If the world doesn’t blow up in the meantime, it should be a very sweet ride!
I saw a couple yesterday in Circiut City foolishly buying a Zune. They obviously don’t have a clue!
JBR
The “shuffle” isnt as high on the amazon list as I would have guessed #21 (with this article) ,
check out the Zune, the black stool has fallen to #43, the brown and white arent even in the top 100 !!!!
Oh, there are 12 differant iPod models selling better than the Zune
19:49 EST
The shuffle is #( on amazon:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/electronics/172630/ref=pd_ts_e_nav/102-8615114-4372943?ts-parent-id=1065836>
Currently, Amazon seems to be sold out on its own stock, so a third party is selling the iPod Shuffle 2G for over $100. I bet that’s why it’s so low on the top sellers list.
19:49 EST
The shuffle is #9 on amazon:
Amazon Mp3 Top Sellers
The iPod shuffle is the best corporate gift for Christmas 2006 – de rigeur. An unnamed major French Bank in Australia is giving it to its staff. How cool is zat, eh?
Evereebozee now: shoofle, shoofle, shoofle, shoofle! (cough)
MW: developers
Now what Microsofties and their key developers will be getting? Some ugly piece of brown merde.
My girlfriend wanted one as soon as she saw the keynote, needless to say, she got one the day it came out. Everyone she has shown it too loves it and wants one as well. I personally know 2 people that have bought one just from her showing it off. This little thing is huge!
Neil
Nov 19, 06 – 06:48 pm
“I saw a couple yesterday in Circiut City foolishly buying a Zune. They obviously don’t have a clue!”
Neil, I saw them return it to the store this morning! Their dog started to incessantly scratch at his ear as zune as they walked in the house.
MDN word “morning” ha ha
Kev:
duh….
thanks
I was just at Target and looked at the Zune display. They have them encased in these huge plastic covers to prevent theft, but NONE of the other players or phones have these huge cases. Is this to disguise the ENORMOUS clunky size of the Zune? I think so. There was one girl looking at one and I totally gave her the greasy eye and pulled out my Nano to compare the size. She said ‘Wow…’
;P
-c
MW: ‘expected’ (it to fail, so when it does don’t look all shocked)
what is this drivecleaner popup that i get and directs me away from here. seems to get around safari’s block block up option
I went to target also and there were crowds around the PS3. the iPod display was hooked up to a portable video device and had a few people around it, but the Zune looked very very lonely, you could hear crickets chirp as you got near it.
This Zune is Black……….pause………NOT!
i got one just for the hell of it and because it’s really cool. i do not do that too often but i sucumbed to the impulse. lends additional meaning to, “listen to your instincts and trust them!!” this quarter’s talley at apple is going to be beyond belief. buy the stock now even at the elevated level it is…………its going higher.
mdn magic word:
After that advertisement from the CNN they will sell like cookies.
We preordered three from Apple last month — engraved with our URL — and are giving them away to our radio listeners. Have them right here. They are so CUTE.
I gotta take a second to share my thoughts about the Zune. Forgive me in advance for the threadjack. Now, granted, I have not actually seen or tried using a Zune myself so everything I am writing about is based on what I have read and know about the product second hand. If I have made any factual errors in describing the Zune, feel free to correct me.
I do not consider myself what I suppose you could call a “Mac Zealot” by any means. I own 2 Macs and 1 PC and I enjoy using both. Unlike many who frequent this site, I have no problem with the Windows OS. My HP works just fine and unlike many Windows users I am not bogged down by spyware, viruses and such because although I am certainly no tech wiz, I have enough basic computer common sense not to allow crap to get onto my computers. So this is not a “Fuck Microsoft” rant, but I do feel the need to express my thoughts on how MS has royally screwed up their attempts to steal away market share from the Apple iPod.
The fact that MS chose to incorporate Wi-Fi capabilities into the Zune and yet limit those capabilities to only allowing Zune-to-Zune song sharing is demonstrates a HUGE lack of vision on their part. Building in Wi-Fi could have opened up a world of possibilities and raised the bar for digital media players all around. Instead, the only thing we pay attention to with the Zune is what’s NOT there. Where’s the wireless syncing capability with the owner’s computer library? Why couldn’t they have set up a Zune ministore directly accessible from the player itself so the user can download tracks right to the Zune and synced to the computer later?
Why aren’t Podcast feeds available for the Zune player and software? Imagine being able to update your Podcast subscription directly to the player, how convenient would that be? You could grab new Podcasts you want right at the breakfast table, skipping the need to plug-in and sync with the computer in the morning, and take it on the road for your commute.
Where’s the streaming web radio capability? It’s almost a no-brainer to include something like that when you have Wi-Fi built into the player. I could tune in to my favorite web radio stream and listen to it anywhere in the house without disturbing anybody.
The screen is bigger, but the resolution is not. For all those who complained that the iPod’s screen is too small to watch video, here was MS’s chance to lure away that portion of the market. At LEAST bump it up to 640×480 which, in today’s increasingly HD world, is the lowest resoultion many are willing to tolerate. The bigger physical screen is nice but not a deal breaker for those who like video on their PMPs.
Back to Wi-Fi: was there no way they could have incorporated a basic web browser so that users could at least subscribe to RSS blog feeds and news stories that they could cache (maybe even using something like Avant Go) and read on the bus/train/dentists office? Again, a chance to offer something different and they screwed it up.
This whole social networking idea is interesting but poorly implemented. At my previous job everyone ran iTunes on a network and we spent a great deal of time listening to each other’s music/Podcast libraries. If something like that was available with the Zune, college students could all study at a library/dorm room/coffee shop with full access to each other’s libraries via an ad hoc network… wouldn’t that be something? No need to beam the physical file over to their local unit, just stream it across and voila, no DRM issues.
And if MS REALLY wanted to nail down the whole social networking craze that’s all the rage among teens today, they could have set up something similar to MySpace where you create a social profile on the web and then store a copy of locally on your Zune. If you meet someone in person you want to be friends with, beam it over to their Zune kind of like a business card. View your “Friends List” right from your Zune and if any of them are physically close by the Zune will let you know. How could would THAT be for the teen crowd?
This is just a small number of things I found lacking in the Zune, and it mostly deals with missed opportunities to create the next evolution in Personal Media Players. Now, I know there’s a sliver of a chance that some of these ideas can be implemented in their next Firmware release and IF any of these features are introduced, only then could I seriously consider the Zune to stand a chance of competing against the iPod.
Whoops, should have proofread my message before submitting it to clean up some basic typos. Anyway, sorry again for the rant and threadjack but I just really needed to express my disappointment with the Zune… not for what it is, but for what it COULD have been.
I use toilet paper to wipe zune tang off my ass.
“yet limit those capabilities to only allowing Zune-to-Zune song sharing is demonstrates a HUGE lack of vision on their part”
Did you consider that once the WiFi hardware is there in the player, updates and extensions to what can be done over WiFi will just be a software update?
The real question is this, could you come up with such an interesting list of possible software updates for today’s iPods?
Apple releases products that are done, so no, not really.
I can think of a lot of hardware updates, though.
See if Apple can’t do that faster than MS.
(they can)
-c
MW: ‘served’
Rant?:
“Did you consider that once the WiFi hardware is there in the player, updates and extensions to what can be done over WiFi will just be a software update?”
In the last paragraph of my original post I mention that these features can certainly be added into future software/firmware releases of the Zune and I do hope that Microsoft will. It’s a disappointment they did not introduce more Wi-Fi functionality at launch. Perhaps they were in a rush to bring the product to market for the holiday season, but the result is that the Zune as it is right now offers very little that the iPod doesn’t.
As for the current generation of iPods… I agree with ChrissyOne, I think Apple considers the current generation of iPods finished and refined products so the only updates I imagine we’ll get will be bug fixes and not major additional functionality. Apple always seem to concentrate their attention on the next release (6G). I definitely anticipate some kind of wireless way (BT, WiFI or both) of connecting to headphones and with speakers, as well as perhaps support for HD video content and tight integration with the iTV.
The shuffle #9 at Amaxon — that’s <i>still<> the reseller who’s selling them for $109! Jeebus! Until Amazon gets their own stock back in, these people need to go to http://www.apple.com/store…
“I can think of a lot of hardware updates, though.
See if Apple can’t do that faster than MS.”
Given how little the HDD iPod has evolved from the first generation ones in terms of conceptual design, features and capabilities, I’d doubt your statement. But let’s see. At least there’s a race on now which might jog Apple out of it’s complacency.
“Apple releases products that are done, so no, not really.”
Meaning you prefer to get your new capabilities by buying a whole new iPod rather than getting an update for what you have? Apple must be very happy with you. Personally i’d like the option of software update rather than a whole new iPod.
“Apple always seem to concentrate their attention on the next release (6G). I definitely anticipate some kind of wireless way”
Sure, now that Microsoft’s leading the way in that arena, Apple will have to follow.