Strange iPod Accessories

abb_road writes "The desire to customize the iPod, when combined with the desire to make a quick buck, can lead to some very strange iPod accessories. While sales of iPods are lower than predicted, the accessory market is still going strong. 'In fact, iPod add-ons have gone, shall we say, fringe. There's a growing list of weird and wacky accessories that range from a leather thong case (it's not what you think) to a dock that doubles as a toilet-tissue holder.'"

Comments

Meanwhile

[MrSquirrel]

Creative and the other mp3 players get no accessories. This is an overlooked market (last time I checked, Creative holds 5% of the mp3 player market... don't say that's too small, because remember -- that's about the percentage that Apple holds in the computer market) and it makes me sad (then again, maybe I don't want any accessories if manufacturers are going to make a leather thong for my Zen).

Re:Meanwhile

[Golias]

Writing software for a Mac and/or Linux is a very different proposition from fabricating hardware for a niche music player.

As expensive as software development is, it doesn't really compare with tooling a factory for making hardware that works with a specific MP3 player, then programming the firmware for said device.

The iPod has been using pretty much the same dock connector for a couple years now, so if you make a gadget for the iPod dock connector there's damn near 50 Million potential customers out there.

Creative has clawed it's way to be the biggest of "the rest of them" with the Zen, at least in terms of this year's sales, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody came out with a statistic that said there were more iRivers out there than Zens. If you are going to go after the "not an iPod" market, your best bet is to make generic gadgets which plug into the headphone jack of any player, and don't rely on the manufacturer-specific features on one niche player.

The iPod is far from perfect. It needs more RAM, and still lacks gapless playback (a major buzz-kill, IMHO), but between its market dominance and it's dock connector with standardized pin-outs, it's no surprise that it's what most manufacturers are building accessories for.

If I'm the CEO of "SuperCoolOggAndMP3Players, inc.", I'd be talking to Apple about licensing the iPod dock for my player. It probably would not be a cheap deal, but it would give me a leg up over Creative and all the other also-rans out there, including the upcoming player from Microsoft.

Re:Win one...

[timster]

More like "submitter is making stuff up".

In fact, Apple sold 8.5 million iPods in the quarter ending April 1, which of course doesn't include the holiday quarter. This is an increase of 61% over the same quarter in 2005.

To include the holiday season: for the six months ending on 4/1 they sold 22.5 million, which is an increase of 128% over the same period in 2005.

True, "predicted" is sort of a weasel word; some people predicted more, and some people predicted less. I'm not aware of a published consensus estimate of iPod unit sales.