iPod Mini Worldwide Rollout Delayed

falcon5768 writes "Apparently those 4-gig, $249 little buggers are selling faster than anyone expected.... So fast that the original April rollout worldwide has been delayed till July to keep up with the demand in the states and to get enough in production to meet worldwide sales. Given that there where 100,000 pre-orders alone, does this mean that yet again Apple hit on a niche that no one else (including me) thought would sell. I have been hearing a lot of rumors that the biggest buyer of the iPod mini has in fact been those female tech geeks out there. So much for the idea a $249 4-gig iPod was a mistake." Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, though, claims that not opening the iPod (big or small) to other formats is a real mistake; he wants to see iPod support other proprietary formats (like, say, Real's).

Comments

Re:PDA

[dfung]

Uh huh...

So where is it that you buy a PocketPC and equip it with 4GB of memory for less than $250? Maybe you were thinking of the "big" iPod? Can you buy 40GB of RAM for your PocketPC for less than $500?

mp3 music can be imperfect, but it's better than the movies that you'll be playing on your pda...

Supported formats

[47Ronin]

*sigh* do we have to go over this again and again? The iPod supports:
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps) with or without Fairplay DRM, MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF and WAV

How many portable players support RealNetworks formats?

Geeks are geeks not marketers.

[Mr. Flibble]

So the slashdot crowd was wrong. (Yet again) Good thing I did not short those SCO stocks before... However, I feel that most slashdotters don't really understand what marketing is.

Even though "marketing" is a dread-word around here, Apple seems to have a really good marketing department to me. They get it right quite often.

Remember, marketing does not just reffer to the selling process of a given item, but also the process by which you conduct research into a given area to determine if there really is a market after all. It is important to check to see if the market is there by research, because what you can divine just by intuition is often wrong for marketing.

A very interesting read (even if you are a computer only type geek) on marketing is:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

It covers things like how Listerine was the market leader for mouthwash - because everyone wanted to keep their mouth free from germs - and the medicie taste was irrelevant... Enter Scope, with better tasting mouthwash for "fresh breath" not germ killing so much, and now Scope is #1 in the market - Listerine #2.

Re:There's a lot of crow sandwiches around here.

[tgibbs]

The error is quite clear. Most people around here seem to see the iPod as basically a hard disk. So their reaction was, "A smaller capacity hard disk that's nearly as expensive as a large one? Who would want that?"

But what Apple knew that the pundits did not is that the iPod is only incidentally a hard disk--it's a music player. So to the average consumer, the reaction was, "A smaller, more convenient iPod, and cheaper to boot? Where do I sign up?" Lower capacity was for most a minor concern, because even the mini holds more than enough music for most activities.

As for support other formats, why bother? Just think of the support headache. When instead they could invest the same amount of effort into improving and promoting the iTunes store. Besides, once people start buying their tunes elsewhere, they might start thinking that they could just as well have one of those clone players. Apple already supports the most common open format, so if people don't want to go with Apple's store and format, they can always order the CDs used from Amazon and rip them to mp3.

Re:Slap iPod on ANYTHING and it'll sell...

[CuriHP]

I've done that with my original 5GB model and it survived just fine two. I haven't had the problem with the mini because I bought the armband. I highly recommend it for running. A few other companies are starting to make armbands that hold the mini if you think the Apple one is too pricey. I thought it was, but between the education discount and the fact that no one else was making them when I ordered mine, I got the Apple one.

Anecdote - female roommate

[Ineffable 27]

When my chick roommate first saw my iPod, she was blown away. After a few preliminary questions, the first thing she said was, "I've got to get one for going to the gym." The second thing: "What colours does it come in?"

She seemed surprisingly disappointed when I said it only came in white.

Apple's done their market research on this one, folks.

Re:Yeah.. right..(ob RvB quote)

[mcbridematt]

Yeah, you do :)

I'm 13 and I'm already reselling for a webhost (not joking, but only to geeky friends at the moment), not to mention the lead Jazilla developer + a whole lot of other stuff.

I refuse to disclose my financial status except to say that I'm in the black and don't have any debt to anybody :)

You can believe me or not believe me on this one..