Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Tuesday, December 23, 2003
16:41 - I shall call it... Mini-Pod http://www.thinksecret.com/news/mwsf04apple.html	(top)
If Think Secret is to be believed, Apple's gearing up to release a line of variously colored mini-iPods at MacWorld next month. Reliable sources inside and outside of Apple have confirmed Apple will announce the new pocket-size iPods in a number of capacities and in various colors, including stripes. Capacities will be 2 and 4GB -- meaning users could store some 400 and 800 songs, respectively. Prices will start at around $100US, Think Secret has learned. It is not known if the new product line will be available immediately after introduction. It is also expected that current iPod models will be revamped to add body colors as well. The addition of mini iPods is not unexpected what with recent comments by Jobs that such a device has been an Apple priority and MP3 industry watchers confirming the market is wide open for Apple to take a lead in technology and offer a better, faster, cheaper, low-end MP3 player. Well, er, yeah, that would certainly quiet the people who say the iPod's big flaw is its price. A month or two ago, Jobs told Newsweek that "If we could make a $100 iPod, yes, absolutely we'd do it." The implication being that they simply couldn't develop such a device under the current cost constraints of the iPod's components. But now a lot of the pseudoPods out there-- like Dell's thing-- have most of the same features but sell for notably less. How? Probably because Apple's always been very reluctant to lower prices when component prices drop-- especially when they're alone in a given field. Say they're selling a $500 iPod, and the price of the hard drives drops by 30%. Do they lower the prices 30%? Naaahh. Why should they? People still want iPods; and in the interim, before they make the jump to the next hard drive size up (as inevitably happens, and brings them back to their earlier price point), they get to reap the fat. In the absence of real competition against their iconic market-leader, the prices are going to sit still. So now that you can get a Dell Jukebox for $250 rather than a similarly-equipped iPod for $400, what does Apple do? Lower the price of the iPod range to bring it into line? No way. They still command the image premium. But they have to court the low-end market. What to do, what to do... I know! I'll have my testicles laminated! Err, wait, no... I know! We'll bring out low-cost mini-iPods! It worked for Final Cut Pro. It's the high-end market leader, but Premiere held doggedly on to the $600 prosumer niche, selling to customers who wanted to dabble in pro video editing but avoid the cost of entry ($1000) associated with FCP, let alone Avid. So what does Apple do? Why, release Final Cut Express, of course, at $300. It's stripped down enough to not be usable at the real pro level, but the strippage isn't even noticed at the prosumer level. And now Premiere is losing its grip on its niche. They could do this with the iPod, a pincers movement on the market-- continue to dominate the high-end (and collect a significant margin), and meanwhile undercut the competition on price (its primary selling point) while retaining the image leader status that any iPod brings. And... various colors? What, whaaat-- is it 1999 again? Or is Apple just floating a trial balloon-- seeing whether lightning can strike twice, whether infiltrating the market with a single unified and unique visual design (like the existing iPod, or the original translucent Bondi Blue iMac) works best as a precursor to trendy customization? Are they playing from the Game Boy script? This oughtta be a fun keynote to watch. My question is this: How big, exactly, is a "mini-iPod"? The existing iPod is pretty bloody small; you can't get it much smaller while remaining hard-drive-based. (Most iPod competitors are considerably bigger, in fact, using standard laptop hard drives, which are cheaper.) Did they find a supplier of 2-4GB drives that are smaller yet in form factor? And what of the controls and the display? I guess we'll see, eh?