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The Billion Dollar iPod Accessories Market
OleSurinam writes "The NYTimes has a story about the lucrative iPod accessories market." From the article: "Making add-ons for the iPod is a $1 billion business. Does that sound like hyperbole? Consider this. Last year, Apple sold 32 million iPods, or one every second. But for every $3 spent on an iPod, at least $1 is spent on an accessory, estimates Steve Baker, an analyst for the NPD Group, a research firm. That works out to three or four additional purchases per iPod."
You obviously did not buy the matching iBook accessory to the iPod.
It's the same reason why Apple doesn't make cameras and printers anymore. Unless they develop inhouse it's likely that they will have to pay for licensing fees and lag behind companies that can pump out products quicker. That's why the dock connector is such genius. Apple gets a small royalty for each accessory using the dock connector without putting R&D into new products that might fail miserably.
I'd like to know more about the lessons Steve learned from his time merchandising kids movies with Pixar and Disney, being on The Gap's board and the influence of Millard Drexler. The iPod ecosystem seems like an old-fashioned consumer goods story - accessories, add-ons, merchandising (I'm thinking of Star Wars et al), etc and having friendly, inviting stores in which to buy the goods. How far along would they be without those Apple Stores?
It seems to me the New Apple's ability to actually capitalise on a successful product is chiefly due to killer merchandising plus an expanding retailing empire. And a bit of good luck!
I'm sure this will be a case study in a business textbook one day ...
As an employee of NPD, I can say that it's not a "guesstimate". We know the exact number of iPods sold because Apple chooses to release those exact numbers. That data comes from the only company that makes iPods. Do you have any idea how many companies make iPod accessories? There's no one source to get that information from. That's what NPD does... we're the "one source" for data across the entire marketplace.
I like the circular logic of people not wanting their precious iPods to get scratched, so they buy a case that looks like a wallet, but protects their iPod from scatches, that no one will ever see since the cool design of the iPod and the non-existant scratches will never been seen! Same logic goes for ppl that buy bras for their cars.
My 20G iPod is scratched to hell, and it should be; I've used it daily for almost 2 years! My car has marks on the front, and it should: I've driven it for almost 2 years, will allot of highway driving!
Don't get me started on Grecim's men's forumla or botox treatments...
fak3r.com
Britain has just launched the HMS Daring, a 600 million pound-sterling (umm ... roughly US$ 1 Billion) battleship complete with iPod docks.
That single ship effectively doubles the total market for "iPod Accessories."
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
They sell it for 45$? That's just a fucking knob. I know knobs are cool and all, but why would you buy a knob for 45$?
It goes to 11.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.