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The Profit Margin on the iPod nano
Ant writes "BusinessWeek Online reports that researcher iSuppli took a look inside the iPod Nano to find out how much Apple is making off it, and who supplies its parts. From the article: 'Apple has sold some 16 million iPods in the first nine months of fiscal 2005, and 21 million since its inception. Thus far in fiscal 2005, the iPod has brought in $2.6 billion in revenue, accounting for about 25% of Apple's total.'"
Here's the part of the article that actually pertains to the headline:
Market research firm iSuppli set out to satisfy the curiosity by buying the $199 2-gigabyte version of the Nano and tearing it apart. The verdict? It costs Apple $90.18 in materials to build the unit and $8 to assemble it, leaving a profit margin before marketing and distribution costs of about 50%. That's consistent with the margins on earlier iPod versions and serves as a reminder of what a profit machine the iPod family of products has become for Apple since it was introduced in 2001.
It costs Apple $90.18 in materials to build the unit and $8 to assemble it, leaving a profit margin before marketing and distribution costs of about 50%.
The article is light on details. I hope they took account of amortization of any tooling or plant investment. It's this sort fo thing that stops the small players, hobbyists and enthusiasts producing anything similar for reasonable money.
Ydco co
Is it an "impossibly small" margin?
Of course, R&D costs nothing, fabrication is free, paying employees for design and support is volunteer based, and filing the patents and copyrights by lawyers are all pro bono.
How is this useful? So now we know how much the pure hardware costs for the Nano? Big deal. It's probably on par with pretty much any MP3 player, especially flash based ones. Is this supposed to convince people that "Oh noes, look, Apple really DOES make money on its hardware!"
Duh. We know Apple makes money on its hardware. So does every other company that makes hardware. But this says nothing for the actual cost to Apple of the device, without consideration for, you know, actually designing and creating the thing.
I hope the extreme reception the Nano got (mine is on the way) is a wake up call to Palm et. al they better get back to their roots and make some THIN and LIGHT devices you can actually easily take with you.
No input on the Nano is crummy, but it's form factor makes it much more likely I will take it someplace.
..don't panic
It would be nice if they factored in the cost of design, development, and manufacturing into that cost. I have worked on consumer electronics projects in the past, and the rule of thumb was adding $1 to the Bill-Of-Materials adds $4 to the retail price. Still it doesn't surprise me that the profit margin is high.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Even if Apple didn't turn a profit on the iPod the benefit to the Apple brand from the iPod has been huge. People will be more likely to by other Apple products because Apple is "cool" again.
Bradley Holt
To pay for the R&D, marketing, etc ... I'm surpised that Jobs doesn't demand a higher return.
I'm wondering if Apple will go the way of Sony. Innovating firms have a tendency to be eaten up by firms who copy and then sell for a lower price. The only way to stop copiers is to create a closed format - basically kill competition before it happens - or to keep innovating to stay ahead of the copiers - easier said than done.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Shouldn't we be Peeling the Nano? Or are we "not listening" to our iPods either?
Why is it assumed that profit is a bad thing?
If Apple wasn't making money off the iPod, *that* would be a bad thing. For many thousands of employees!
All these articles lately make me think the editors have gone commie/socialist on us....
-MrLogic
Apple is currently the most innovative computer company around, with an operating system that makes the current market leader look like a dinosaur. The fact that a quarter of their profit comes from a damn mp3 player is just sad.
In a related story, researches have discovered that new home construction costs practically nothing at all, as the wood was taken from trees that were growing there anyway. Wood costs nothing to fabricate, as mother nature provides it for free (given enough time). The foundation is poured from concrete, which is just rocks, sand, and water, all of which are freely available. Thus, new home construction is 100% profit.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
> A class-action suit was filed against Apple over the illegal bundling of iTunes with iPod. This practice is anti-competitive.
ROFL! because bundling a driver with the hardware SHOULD BE BANNED.
retards.
RST
...is razor thin and quite light.
Remember that this is per-unit profit, but doesn't include R&D costs.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
What about the engineering costs? That hardware doesn't design itself. The software updates don't write themselves.
I'm not saying marketing and distribution are legitimate costs, just that they seem to have overlooked a major one.
I believe that R&D costs are considered "sunk" costs and are not a part of the actual cost. It's a consideration in pricing, of course, but the point I kept getting when researching product pricing was that sunk costs are gone whether or not you sell any or how much you sell them for.
Overhead for plants, staff, etc. probably aren't factored into their estimate, though. How could they know the cost of running the factories, the costs of paying all the employees (including plant managers and non-assembly staff), etc.? I'm not positive, but I'd assume that marketing costs are part of the Cost of Acquiring a Customer - which should be factored in as well.
that's one big ass driver. that's like saying it would be ok for epson scanners to work only with epson imaging software. no photoshop, no paintshop, no gimp, etc. of course, scanners don't have drm and the riaa to deal with either.
I could understand (evil as it may be) Apple wanting to control distribution if they were the top dog in the computer business, but as it stands i think Apple would do well to play friendly with everyone who wants to push Apple products to the masses (iPods excluded, they're all over the place).
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
It doesn't say anything about the profit Apple is making with the iPod nano. It only shows the price of the used components. This could be interesting for any competitors in the MP3-player market. You'd still need developers, marketing and all that other stuff used to get a product to market ...
The point that things like this and this demonstrate, is that Pocket is the New Platform.
..
..]
Apple are pretty savvy to this. iPod nano is a keyboard and mouse interface away from being a Classic.. its not unusual that the same sort of 'monolith screen slab' form factor of the original Mac is still resonant in their current design path.
But now, it fits in your pocket. And it won't be long until the LED projector segment shrinks to the same form-factor, and we'll see, perhaps, even the death of laptops
[.. there's nothing quite so cool as having torrent in your pocket
With that formula Windows' profit margin is about 99.9%, because CD only costs 10c to make.
As a software professional, I've never been able to calculate real profit margin of any product that contains any kind of a software. Especially in a big company, you got different software modules from different products linked together. For example if software module A costs $500,000 to develop and it's sold with $1000 per license. Then you have a software module B that cost $2,000,000 to develop, and sold $100 per license. Both of those modules are sold separately, but then you decide to use both of their technology to develop a product C. It costs additional $100,000. All of those modules continue to sell separately. What is profit margin of product C? Do you count in only the $100,000 or that part of A and B, which haven't been covered by license sales? What about company's administration costs, marketing costs, etc.
And that was an extremely simple example. Old company has thousands of software modules, all linked to each other in some way. You can never really point out the actual cost of a product in software business.
My point is: The only way to know the real margins of a product, is to see how good salaries are in that company (as long as it is profitable)
PS. I bet iPod family's UI design has cost ten times more to develop than any other competitor's product's. There are countless number of factors that you can't even imagine when considering those margins. (But as a software manager, I consider it an advantage. No matter how bad failure a development project is, you can always trick those business directors to believe that it actually was a success. You'll just sweep those man-months under the carpet (of some other project/product) and say you used a software module that was developed by other project.)
Because you're on slashdot. Read through any article about software piracy or "sharing" movies and music. Look for all of the responses that talk about a "dead business model" of paying people thousands or millions of dollars to create software or digital products and, if they're good, expecting to get a profit. Copyrights and patents are evil. Blah, blah, blah. I can agree to a certain degree on some of these matters, much of the Slashdot community's negative feelings about those that actually want to make money from a product is truly amazing.
The iPod Nano was not an open source linux based product with an underground publicity campaign. If it was, everyone would be happy.
Then again, it is an Apple product, which means there will be far less criticism than if, say, it was a Dell product.
For your illustration to work, you have to assume the iPod only works with iTunes. I won't list them here, but there are several other third party apps that people can use to transfer stuff to their iPod with.
So... it is the same as with scanners. Apple bundles their own software that they developed, but you're free to use whatever other program you find that can speak to the iPod.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Overhead for plants, staff, etc.
I would think that's exactly what the $8 assembly cost is estimating.
The iPod is increasing its margins, even as it increases the number of units sold, to the point where they're consuming something like 40 percent of Samsung's high capacity NAND chips. And yet somehow, they get a deal on parts that saves Apple like 40 percent of the cost of chips. "Crotty estimates that Apple is paying $54 for 2 gigabytes worth of memory. That would cost any other manufacturer $90." That seems like a large discount to give somebody who desperately needs your product. I do realize that manufacturers often give bulk discounts, it seems a bit silly to offer 40 percent off at the biggest order end.
No wonder Jobs says iTunes is designed to move hardware; without it, somebody would step in and produce the same thing at half the price!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
See people, its easy to save money, just buy the parts plus a sodering iron and get to work. At the estimated 4 dollars to assemble, I estimate it will take a novice about an hour.
Seriously though, ipods don't seem significantly more expensive than the competetion and companies are exiting the market (RIO), so I'd expect margins aren't as high as this estimate. Apple usually gets around 20-30% margins based on SEC filings.
Although your point has already been refuted, it should also be pointed out that in the examples you give above (well, photoshop and paintshop at least), you're still using the epson imaging software, except as a plugin (via TWAIN).
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
We've seen how durable these new nanos are. That's going to help their profits tremendously as now a 5 foot drop means a scratch, not a invisible damaged circuit they have to swap out units for under warrantee. Good for them, good for me. Um, sorta. Dropped my mini and 10 days later, new mini. I think only ACME delivery to Wile E. Coyote is faster. Reducing that overhead potential just helps them more.
Infinity is overrated, Infinity+1, now that's cool!
Here is a primer on business terminology.
Revenue = total amount of money the business brings in through sales.
Cost (of manufacture) = cost to actually manufacture or acquire item. Includes labor, factory and raw materials.
Margin = Revenue - Cost. (for most corps around 40-50% of revenue - less and you go out of business)
M&A = management and sales costs.
R&D = R&D Costs.
Profit = Revenue - Cost - M&A - R&D - Borrowing Costs - Other Transactions.
Profit for most corps runs 5-15% of Revenues. Less and you are in big trouble.
Note Profit does not equal Revenue, Revenue - Cost or Margin. All of these are MUCH greater than Profit. Profit is the revenue the company left after paying off everybody.
but I think I am not, I know of no one who has bought any form of iPod who actually bought an Apple computer. Now I know a few Mac users who have iPods.
What I have seen is that they will most likely buy ANOTHER iPod. The only few who considered buying an Apple computer got immediately turned off by the price.
It is all about price points. The iPods are doing well now because they are at that magical number of being below $299 and most being $199 and under. Look where the largest iPod market is, it is that lower price range.
Meaning, if Apple can come out with other items in that range people might just stop and buy, may I suggest a media center type solution. An Apple PVR with more functionality?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That *is* what Sony tries to do, and that's part of what's killing it. Sony's great if you only own Sony products. Otherwise, they put all their effort into supporting their own proprietary formats and such that are total losers. They've been doing it since the 50's, and they tend to lose.
In my opinion, Sony isn't big enough - or else doesn't capture enough marketshare when they innovate something - to be able to start a proprietary format effectively.
Why is this news? I'm seeing it all over the web. Apple can charge whatever they want. If you don't like it, buy something else.
Actually, I can hook up my iPod nano to more than one computer without having to format it first. I haven't tried to copy songs from the iPod to the computer yet, but even the functionality I just mentioned is an improvement over my old Shuffle.
Sent from my iPhone
They did factor in the cost of manufacturing - $8. The others, being fixed rather than per-unit, depend upon the volume sold. If they sell hundreds of thousands, that would be high; if they sell tens of millions, that would be low. They are working only BOM*2 rather than the *4 you remember - which is only viable if you expect huge volumes.
Or, to put it another way, if it cost $8 million to develop (design, software etc. - just a guess) and they are making $80 per unit, they need to sell 100,000 units to break even. 200,000 units gives a 100% ROI, whcih is the sort of return Apple needs to make off *every* product if it is to live. A million units is the sort of figure they need to keep their stock looking cheerful. Given the buzz they have, this doesn't look unlikely.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
TFA doesn't get into figuring out the net profit margin, which, in layman's terms is the real, bottom line profit margin. 50% is a completely meaningless figure since, as everyone else is mentioning, does not include R&D or marketing costs. Sure, go on a self-righteous rant about Apple's marketing, but the cost is what it is. An earlier thread about Intel's "$40 to produce a chip" was in much of a similar vein and equally meaningless. Please, can we avoid these articles that essentially discuss gibberish numbers?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Perhaps I have weird tastes and needs, but I would rather like to see prices of MP3 players drop steadily instead of having MP3 players getting smaller and smaller and staying at the same price tag.
MP3 players have been on the market for, what, more than 5 years now? Did the prices drop significantly? Not that I can see. The average player still sells for a good 300-400$ here in Canada, same as 5 years ago. Granted, the capacity of MP3 players has increased by leaps and bounds, but really, how many people need 20gb or more? Admittedly, I have more than 20gb of music, but of all the people I know, maybe 1 out of 20 need nearly as much. How is it that the bottom-of-line (regular) Ipod is now 20gb? Will next year's lineup be 40, 80 and 120gb Ipods but still at the same price?
If I remember correctly, it didn't take 5 years for portable CD players to get around a 100$ price point.
I find that the size of the regular Ipod is just perfect, and that the Mini and Nano are too small. It might have something to do with the fact that a regular Ipod is still about 1/3 of the size and weight of my portable CD player, but I know that the size current size of the Ipod doesn't botter me at all when wether i'm walking or jogging.
All that being said, I can understand Apple for wanting to keep improving their products so they can keep keep the prices up, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure that if they (or other companies) started making cheap MP3 players that didn't focus on neither being small or having a huge capacity (say, the size of a regular Ipod, with 5-10gb capacity), and price them so the majority of people can afford them, they would sell like hot-cakes.
For your illustration to work, you have to assume the iPod only works with iTunes.
Maybe I missed something somewhere, but how is that different than providing drivers for any other piece of hardware? The last mouse I bought came with a bundled driver and other software, though it was completely unnecessary. You always bundle the hardware with the appropriate drivers unless you can be guaranteed that everyone who buys it will have appropriate drivers that will work as well or better (or at least work). To do otherwise means you're shipping a non-functional product.
Their manufacturing yield sure as hell isn't 98%+ at this point, so they must be taking a hit there. As a slew of other posters have pointed out, there's a whole lot more to margin, even gross margin, than BOM and assembly costs.
How about printers? HP makes money off of toner sales, not printer sales.
This same type of logic applies to other sectors. Just look at Gillette. They basically give their razors (Mach 3, etc.) away at cost knowing that you are going by replacement blades at some point.
I'm always amused to see articles like this talking about profit margins and the like, as if the cost of production and marketing was a huge factor in deciding what to charge for a product. It is a factor in deciding whether or not to make a product, and what features are included in a product, but in how much to charge? You charge what people are willing to pay (actually what will make you the most profit when you balance the number of sales you will get at a given price point). I've worked at several start-up companies and seen the same scenario. We're doing OK, and getting by, hire some marketing experts to consult and they say, "well here's your problem, you're not charging enough." We quadruple the price of the product and suddenly get loads more sales. You see many people think price is equal to quality, or you get what you pay for. If you just raise the price drastically, buyers think your product is better. A good strategy seems to be seeing what your competitors are selling for, hyping one or two things you do better than them, hyping generally how much better your product is (using unspecific terms), and setting you price 10-20% higher than theirs. Everyone assumes since your product costs more it is better and 20% isn't huge, especially if they are spending their company's money instead of theirs.
Anyone who thinks the cost of producing a product has a lot to do with what it sells for is likely clueless.
And im not even going to get into the other shit listed since some isnt even proven but just baseless accusation, and nothing says the reason Jobs gave (HIS OWN MONEY) to Kennedy has to be because of buisness (its well know Jobs is a very liberal guy and a huge Democratic Party contributer)
I mean damn if your going to troll, i could as a Apple user come up with a LOT better shit to troll with than you just did. Sure Apple is no saint. But its no Microsoft either.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The third-party software doesn't put the files on the ipod as efficiently. This means that unless you use itunes, your ipod won't work as quickly, and the battery will run out faster. Apple are effectively using their monopoly in one market to try to dominate another. This is Microsoft tactics.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. There are many ways to fill your ipod... and the 3rd party apps do fill it the same way.
2. You charge your ipod on ANY Powered USB port. It doesn't matter if the port is even plugged into a computer if it's powered.
3. itunes just makes it easier to use with an ipod... because they designed it to work mainly witht he ipod. the other apps are designed to work with many different players. Hell if you wanted you could just drag and drop the songs you wanted into the ipod.
Patrick Havens (Mr. 573333 to you.) Graphic Artist / Coder / Father / Journeler
Every ipod ever has scratched easily. Deal with it.
Hang on a second. I got Nero bundled with my DVD writer too. It was even a special OEM version tied to that writer.
What's wrong with hardware coming with appropriate software?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Such arrangements have been around for years. But they are on the way out. The major Chinese electronics companies are establishing their own brands. Asus is a well known motherboard manufacturer. Asus and Inventec both sell PCs and laptops under their own names. They're rapidly moving from contract manufacturing to owning the entire business. The margins are much better when you own the brand.
Flextronics, the big player, is moving in this direction aggressively. They used to just assemble boards. Now they do design, engineering, procurement, and manufacturing. They're even partnered with frogdesign, so their stuff can look cool, too. All they need is a marketing channel.
The Chinese manufacturing companies have been accepting low margins. But that's coming to an end. Too many US companies have become "pure brands", middlemen between Chinese manufacturers and US retailers. Such companies can be bypassed. And WalMart will help them do it.
Uh, no. Maybe Apple should deal with it.
Digg is what I remember Slashdot being five years ago, and best of all, YOU choose the stories.
/. Kevin Rose posted it on Digg.com.
Digg readers knew about the iPod nano days before its official announcement and article on
It's like Kuro5hin without the suck.
"Sufferin' succotash."
For your illustration to work, you have to assume Windows only works with Internet Explorer. I won't list them here, but there are several other third party browsers that people can use to access the web with.
/.
So... it is the same as with scanners. Microsoft bundles their own software that they developed, but you're free to use whatever other program you find that can speak to the web.
Of course this is sacrelidge on
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Three guys all post the same comment at the same time trying to save people from having to waste their time reading a largely irrelevant article advertisement for an iPod, so two of them get modded Redundant.
Way to encourage people not to post, Slashfags.
Unless you crack or go around the DRM, Apple does have a closed format: People who buy music from itunes need an iPod. When the battery dies, they need another one.
Not sure how important this is to Apple currently: Most people I know get who use iPods get most of their music from ripping CDs, not downloads. But itunes is much more successful than all the various WMA-bsaed clones.
I haven't heard much on this. Any reasons why?
just like Microsoft's model has them losing BILLIONS on xBox sales to make it up on game sales.
...
Of course, Apple could have chosen to go more Nintendo's route, and make money on the device and the music.
Me, I just love the free Napster subscription for music downloads you can get at the University of Washington
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This iPod is not made by Asus or Inventec. The Mini was not made by Asus either. No, it wasn't made by Apple either. But you and your sources overlooked one company, I don't know how that happened. Additional note, your Inventec link is wrong. inventec.com is a different company than http://www.iac.com.tw/IAC Taiwan. Also, I don't believe Inventec makes laptops under any name. See link above. They do make OKWAP phones and some other stuff. They also make a lot of TI calculators.
But anyway, you describe the situation well from a consumer point of view, but I think you miss on some other points.
The reasons the "pure brands" are going away is at least as much because Wal-Mart and Best Buy want them to as because the Chinese manufacturers want them to. Retailers are so powerful now, they see the margins of the brands and decide to take it for themselves. Make no mistake, the margins to the Chinese manufacturers are not going up much, the freed-up money goes to the retailer.
Home Depot really started this for items of value (power and hand tools) and everyone has jumped right on. It's leading to brand desensitization, so much so that CostCo sells many many big-screen TVs with nearly one-off brand names. Price drives these sales.
Anyway, as to Flextronics, they're doing great in certain markets. But as far as something like an iPod, they just can't manage it. The Xbox debacle (5 years ago now) really taught the industry a lesson. If you want a good device, Flex is okay. If you want a very stylish, cutting-edge device, Flex can't handle it themselves. They could never have designed the Nano. They could manufacture it, but they don't really like to play in that market like they used to from what I can tell. I mean, if you're making XBoxes or iPods, they'd probably bid on it, but otherwise, they'd rather design it also.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Utterly pointless article. Why not examine the parts cost of the software producers. You will then find they have a 99% profit margin.
RIAA and MPAA with DVD and CD?
Heck I think Apple has a pretty lousy profit margin in comparison.
They chose the second. This meant their PC market share will probably now never rise above 5%, the PC product line whatever its merits will not be a source of much growth.
Apple's PC sales growth is around double that of the rest of the industry. It's at over 40%.
Let me just also add, that if Apples marketshare is still under 5% in 2 years, I'll sell my macs and go back to my Amiga 500.
Someone else might put the parts together, but Apple designed it. The design is what makes it an iPod, not who put it together.
Apple does a whole lot more than distribution and marketing. The iPod is not an OEM device like a thumb drive.
What you're looking for, I think, is a layman's breakdown of Apple's Profit & Loss accounts. The article provides a look at gross margins on a single product - nothing more - which are only one part of the P&L, and is specifically not the 'profit'. It's very hard, for a company the size of Apple, to accurately break down every cost and associate it with a specific product's income.
That said, those are nice healthy gross margins. Not extortionate though, as the cost of fabrication, design, advertising, etc all goes 'below the gross' on the accounts, and so aren't taken into account in this figure. That's not omission - it's just the way accounts are done.
If you're interested, take a look at Apple's financials, which, as with every publicly traded company, are made up of three sheets - the Income Statement, the Balance Sheet and the Cash Flow. These are just the summaries, though - for the detailed accounts you need to get ahold of the full set of statements.
-EvilMagnus
1. No, the itunes has a special way of doing it which makes it faster. I.e. your ipod is effectively reduced in functionality unless you use Apple's software. This is a disgrace.
2. USB ports are no use when I'm over the hills somewhere, but spare batteries in my pocket are.
What about Aple's investment in manufacturing facilities? Do they build them themselves or contract out?
Profit, by the way, is good. It means that the market judges something as worth doing. As an Apple shareholder, for me Apple profit is very good indeed.
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
The article says Apple is getting a gigabyte of flash for $25 (wholesale). The best RAM prices I've seen this year has been $118 (retail). As recently as last year flash was more expensive.
Other Ipods don't scratch as easily as the Nano does. I went into the Chicago Apple Store the day the Nano came out and the Nanos on display looked flawless. Two weeks later you can barely see the screen through the scratches on most of them. It was literally like looking through a fog. In comparison, the Mini's (at least two of which I know have been on display for months) looked great with only minor scratches on the body and barely any on the screen. The same goes for the Mini that I've owned for a year. A few superficial scraches on the body and hardly any on the screen. I'll stick with the Mini for now.
D aaTXUpD.0@.68b94d61_ scratching/
Also, The Register as written an article and there are 200+ posts on the Apple Discussion Board regarding this issue:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@823.1UX
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/23/ipod_nano
This 'special way' being "copying song files over to Ipod Volume:iPod Control and updating a database file?
It's not reduced in functionality. I've used other apps and they work perfectly.
Also, have you looked at it in the sense that maybe nobody else has bothered to write software to use this non-existent 'fast way'?
If you don't like it, don't buy it. I believe it even states on the box 'iPod+iTunes'.
The bundling of the itunes servive with the iPod is anti-competitive, because of the DRM. All DRM is anti-competitive. The point is to tie media files to a specific brand of hardware or software.
But at least Apple is better than its main competitor, the convicted monopolist that bundles its DRM software with nearly every computer.
I just bought an SD/MMC card based MP3 player (information and pictures here). When I opened it up, I was amazed how small the actual circuit board was, though bigger than the Nano. But I now have an SD/MMC card reader and USB thumb drive as well as an MP3 player all in one.
Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just repeating the facts read elsewhere: itunes uses some sort of hashing system to put the fiels on the ipod in an efficient way. Third-party programmes can't do that.
This is YET ANOTHER reason why you shouldn't buy an ipod instead of cheaper, more functional alternatives.
Once the novelty of the iPod wears off, then where will Apple be? Sure they can release gee-whiz-bang new iPods probably another 2-3 times if they are lucky, but there is only so much you can do.
:) I would guess Apple is barely scraping by that so called 20% mark mentioned in the article.
Also the article leaves a lot out, such as wholesale price and advertising, which as most know, is probably 50%+ of their revenue (well in MS's case 200%
The Nano LCD's glass surface is hidden under a clear plastic cover (in fact it covers the entire top of the Nano), whereas on the Mini the glass screen of the LCD is exposed. Glass is more difficult to scratch than plastic, therefore it is harder to scratch the Mini's screen than the Nano.
If you care about scratches, get a Mini on sale. The glass screen and metal body are very scratch resistant.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It seems like a fairly recent phenomena that any sort of profit made by businesses is painted in a bad light. The fact is, iPods, computers, and just about any other product exists because a person or group of people thought they could make money producing them. When they succeede, it is a good thing. It means jobs, innovation, and economic growth. This is capitalism, and it's worked pretty well, compared to the other options.
Well, yes, that is OK and perfectly legal. It doesn't make good business sense, but there's nothing immoral or illegal in making your product work only with one's own software.
... and then they built the supercollider.
How about you show a link to this "fact," rather than just saying it is true? Sounds like a load of FUD to me. people who bash the iPod usually don't bother with actual facts. It's more about personal bitterness and unfulfilment.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Me too!
Seriously, though, I was a little scared that they knew who I was and my age. But I appreciated the gesture enough anyway to let that free razor make my razor-buying decisions from now on.
I used an electric for a while, but when I started using regular razors that's the one I used. Still using it too...and so is my friend who got one as well.
To get even more OT, do you think the buzzy one gives any advantage other than psychological? I got one now too, but I can't tell any difference in the way it shaves.
and then bought an iBook soon after. In fact using iTunes on a PC led me to buy the iPod in the first place.
Next time your eating a bag of Lay's potato chips,think to yourself, is there 3 or 5 cents worth of product in this bag that I just paid $1.49 for. How many cents worth of water,carmel color and,corn syrup in this can of Pepsi?
The Tomato Team
Your overall point is well taken, I just have a small twist to offer on the sentence above. I assumed (maybe falsely) that you referred to the salaries of individual contributors, i.e. non-execs, at the company. I'd propose that such salaries could be a more reliable measure of profit if it wasn't increasingly habitual for executives and board members to grossly overcompensate themselves, often to degrees which put the average contributor comparatively in the position of sharecropper, and often completely without regard to the performance of the company stock. As a bit of a digression: I recently had a conversation with a friend who invests in the stock market, and he said that he has a policy of favoring stocks where the ceo caps their total pay (salary plus bonuses + stock) at some reasonable multiple of the lowest-paid company contributors. He has had good results with this policy, e.g. several stocks up x2 since last year. He likes this investment policy both because it quells his outrage at exhorbitant exec salaries, and because of a point made in the above article:
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Yeah, you can hook up an iPod to more than one computer. Getting to the music is not altogether straightforward, but is possible and easy. However, this is because Apple hasn't done ridiculous stuff to disallow it; if they allowed file transfers from iPod to iPod on the train, they would be putting in functionality that would be much more clearly for illegal filesharing.