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100 Million iPods
prelelat writes "I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate."
My 2004 4th generation ipod is still working, with good battery life etc. Though I did have to do the business-card trick to fix the hard drive.
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame"
"No wireless. More space than a Zune. Lame."
- CmdrBallmer
I personally, find it funny, how some people, tend to abuse commas. What is so hard, to understand? This has to be one of the worst headlines ever. It took me 4 times reading it before I started to think I understood what the author was getting at.
To keep on-topic, my 3G 15GB iPod still works just fine. The battery doesn't last the 8 or so hours it used to (more like 6 now), but it still runs like a champ.
today is spelling optional day.
iPod and Dvorak go together like peanut butter and jelly.......
A Million Man (Woman) Ipod March on Washington DC to show some solidarity?
No wireless. Less space than 100 million nomads. Lame.
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
Even if there's a 10% warantee number, that still makes for 90M-or-so real sales. That is not too suprising considering how iconic the ipod is and how much Apple have invested in creating that image.
I wonder what Apple's advertising budget is for ipod? It probably gets to be somewhere around a buck per unit.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
B) Hard to believe? The company is making a statement of fact flat out, and just not including the caveats such as replacement or upgrade purchases.
Slow. News. Day.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Let's put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.
In my opinion the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software... the whole system just works. You don't have to worry about, missing DLLs, bad firmware that causes the interface to become unresponsive, or other strange errors that manifest themselves on competing digital music players. I used to have a no-brand hard disk based player that would cause a horrible screeching noise in the earphones whenever the disk spun up to access the next chunk of music data. Never had this problem on my iPod. Also, for example, when you pull your headphone plug out of the earphone jack, my iPod automatically goes into Pause mode. They obviously put a sensor on the earphone jack that detects the presence of something plugged in, and tied that into the firmware... this provides a seamless intuitive interface to the end-use. This is why they have sold 100 million players, and profited from it, and rightly so. Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
Even with a failure rate of 10% (which is extraordinary), that is still 90m iPods sold.
Apple has done extraordinarily well here with the iPod and is poised to shape the future of digital downloads (software and media) with their iTunes Store.
GPL Deconstructed
If we assume a failure rate of 5%...
Of course, the real question is whether or not the proportion of lost/broken/damaged/stolen/etc iPods is similar to other devices. After all, do iPods really have a higher failure rate, or is it because there's more of them, you hear more about them?
(And before you start blaming the non-replacable battery - there are few devices other than cellphones, cameras and laptops where having a replacable battery actually is useful - it's likely by the time you need a replacement, the battery isn't even made anymore... Can you get replacement Li-Ion batteries for the many HPaq PDAs out there other than the current model/phone models? Or the multitude of 'superior' mp3 players of at least a couple years vintage?)
As opposed to reading statements of the obvious, just absorb the details yourself and draw your own conclusions from Apple's Press Release.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Apple said they sold 100 million iPods. What difference does it make how many were replacement iPods for broken or stolen units? If anything, that would only make the case that much stronger for the popularity of the iPod: People were willing to buy another one to replace a broken or stolen one. What does he mean when he says "how many are sitting in drawers"? What does that have to do with anything? I'm sure any portable music player would be happy if they sold 10% as many and they were all sitting in drawers. This entire article is a troll...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Obviously after so many years on the market and sales having fallen back down to the 3 percent range desktop computers is not your area of competence.
Yes, the marketing and other typography is superb.
Yes, the case designs are very sleek.
Yes, the UI widgets have a polish and overall aesthetic that embarrasses Windows and Linux desktops.
Stop wasting your time. Sell off the good parts of OS X to IBM or some other computing company that might be able to do something useful with them...
and go focus on digital media hardware and software. Obviously you've found your calling.
100 million sold is 100 million sold. Doesn't matter if some are replacements or not. When my current car dies (160K and counting :-) I will go get another. The manufacturer gets to chalk up yet another sale. Doesn't matter that I purchased off of them before. A sale is a sale is a sale.
1E8 x 2E10 bytes (avg) = 2E18 bytes = 2 exabytes
1 song = 4E6 bytes
Total songs = 2E18 bytes / 4E6 bytes = 5E11 songs
1 song via ITMS = $1
Total cost to fill all ipods = 500 000 000 000 dollars
GDP of New Zealand = 108 520 000 000
Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.
Wow! That is a lot of music!
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Detain, military tribunals, conviction, and sentencing for the world's largest crime syndicate.
Of course, most the U.S. population is brain dead.
Thanks for your support.
Patriotically,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
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As a publicly-traded company, it would be pretty hard to fudge these numbers and get away with it, but I guess anything is possible.
The guy that wrote the article sounds extremely bitter... did he design the Zune or something? Waaa waaa how many of those replaced old ipods or were stolen? WHO CARES? The press release is for ipods sold, not ipods currently in use. 100 million sold is amazing, no matter how you slice it.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Anecdotally, I have gone through three ipods... a 3G which I carelessly dropped on concrete from about 5 feet, and a 5G which replaced the broken 3G, which I use every day. I was also given a nano as a gift, and I use that at the gym, so I don't have to worry about dropping the 5G. Looking around at the gym, I would also estimate 30% or so of the people in my line of sight at any time there are plugged into a nano or shuffle; In addition, ipods are a very common sight on desks during the day at work, too.
I don't think 100 million ipods sold to date is a particularly unbelievable number. If they told me there were 100 million ipods sold, and they're all still alive "in the wild," that would be pretty hard to swallow.
Really, Apple have sold a lot. Why would they lie, we know it is the most successful mp3 player on the planet, why must everything be nitpicked. In this case, its a huge conspiracy, Apple might not have sold a hundred million, they could be one or two off the mark. Shit they are still selling them now so any inaccuracies have been covered by today's sales. Talk about slow news day on the writers part. Apple puts out a fairly unremarkable press piece and somebody ponders whether they are telling the whole truth or not. Did anybody challenge SONY when they declared their sales figures for the Original Walkman? Yes, I'm a fanboy but I didn't give a shit in the first place, I saw the headline on macrumors.com and didn't bother to investigate any further because its a non event to me. Come back to me when Apple sell 100 million macs in a 5 year period then dispute those figures.
Jonathanjk.com
The statistic is about "sold", so even if I replace my iPod every day, I put money out of my pocket and buy a new iPod.
Apple profits from selling the hardware, not from the active userbase, in fact, they benefit from smaller userbase (less loss/load on iTunes) that refreshes its hardware often.
Even if it was one single crazy guy, who bought 100 million iPods, Apple doesn't give a damn.
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When you're on top, everyone hates you. When you're not, misery loves company. And if you're in the middle, they'll simply take your stuff.
technical writing / development
over 10 billion sold
What?
Maybe you can let the iPod makers leave the plant tonight as a reward.
It would be more prudent for Microsoft to dump the XBox, the Zune, Live Search, and Zune Marketplace before Apple should dump the Mac.
Especially seeing how a little less than half of their profits each year stem from the Mac. Dumping the Mac would almost automatically require them to dump half their workforce, more or less.
GPL Deconstructed
Taking in account that it took 20 years for televisions to sell about 70 millions sets on US (source. I don't have stats for radio and phone sets, but 100 million units is an impressive feat regardless of substitution pieces or upgrades.
Whatever the failure rate, that is still 100M iPods *sold*. Just like if I throw 100 eggs and 99% of them break, that is still 100 eggs "thrown".
I have a 4G iPod which Apple replaced 5 times. Do all of them count?
I really do regret buying the iPod the thing crashes worse than windows back when windows was unreliable. The only reason I bought it was because I thought and still think the wheel design is genius. But what good is a dedicated mp3 player if it's so unreliable.
Here's a comparison I put together from Wikipedia/Google.
Nintendo DS: 39.8 million (total sales)
Gameboy: 69 Million (total sales)
Gameboy Advance: 77 million (total sales)
iPod: 100 million (total sales)
Cellphones: 2,000 million (currently in use)
I think I have a better understanding of why they built the iPhone...
There was a single comma in the entire summary. It wasn't really used correctly, but it really shouldn't have taken you four tries to understand.
Well, now I know how to obfusticate any sensitive documentation. Just insert commas where they don't belong and a certain proportion of slashdot readers will waste valuable brain cycles attempting to decipher it. Whereas my loyal minions, having simpler brains, will ignore any and all punctuation marks and will implement my open source doomsday devices first.
I am pretty certain this number relates to how many iPods Apple has sold to retailers; not how many those retailers have sold to the public. Wal-Mart places an order for iPod and bam! There's another 100,000 units 'sold'. And are we talking about all iPods here? Some of those 1st gen Shuffles are practically given away by some retailers (i.e. all orders over $499 get a free iPod Shuffle!).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Also note that the 100 million includes the $80 iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. It's not hard to believe people owning multiple iPod models, either because they received them as gifts or for different uses (Shuffle for going on a jog, high-capacity standard iPod for long drives etc.).
Why is everyone shocked at the total of 100 million iPods sold and calling conspiracy over it? After all, the PS2 had over 115 million units shipped worldwide by December 2006. Do people not believe that figure?
I find it somewhat hard to believe...
...which makes me believe the number may be more accurate.
Ummmmm... what? How the fuck do you make these two statements about the same fucking number/article?
These are sales numbers to the retailers and distributors. I wouldn't think that it would be outrageous to think that there are 50+ million iPods sitting on store shelves and in warehouses right now. "Sales" numbers coming from manufacturers are always very, very generous.
I don't respond to AC's.
I can't beleive some of these apple fanbois
I've seen atleast five "Who cares about the other statistics about those Ipods, 100 million were sold"
It matters becuase if 95million don't work their market is gonna drop them, and it wont matter how many they sold they'll be dead and known as unreliable, expensive and uncool. All those things matter becuase Ipod itself is not a music player, it's an image, of the owner, of the company that makes it. You own an Ipod you have taste, you are cool. Apple are a cool company. Those other questions matter, because if Ipod were sold purely on that, they could just continue to be kool, but its not based on that, people want to have something that works, that does what they want. It's important becuase it gives us a look at what is NEW- hence it would be NEWS! This is not news because everyone knows Ipod is popular, 100million doesn't really give joe public, who doesn't have these figures at his fingers normally, anything to compare it to- so it isn't news, it doens't tell people something.
iPod - 40GB (3/4th gen?)
iPod Mini (1st gen)
iPod Nano (2nd gen)
iPod Shuffle (1st gen)
iPod Shuffle (2nd gen)
I've been tempted to get the 5.5gen iPod, but I think I'll wait for widescreen.
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I not only think the 100 million iPod figure is ridiculous, but also a huge exaggeration. No way could Apple sell that many in that short amount of time. This reminds me of how either Sirius or XM satellite radio claimed that had 6.9 million subscribers when really most of those, "subscribers" were actually satellite radio systems that were already installed inside brand new cars waiting to be sold. I think that Apple may have just put up this figure to encourage confidence in the company and possibly help sell their stock.
Nice, select the one negative article about this news. Well done. Lame.
Given that 80 million iPods have been sold in the last two years - wait, Apple said they had sold 10m in early 2005 - so 90 million iPods in the last two years, I'd guess that the vast majority of them are in use (i.e., they work and aren't under the sofa missing) still (even if they were stolen!).
My iPod nano is 20 months old and I use it all the time still.
I bet that over time less than 10 million iPods sold were due to a previous iPod breaking and being out of warranty. Probably less than 5 million. Likely less than 2 million. Apple will sell than many in a couple of weeks, so it's a rather pointless argument anyway.
Anyway, why doesn't this thinking apply to other manufacturers? Sony - 120m or so PS2s for example. Sold == Sold in anybody's book.
Oooooooh, I feel your man-bone inside me!!! Fuck me, CmdrTaco, fuck me hard!
Will MS make the magic number?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've never seen lUck I''l find people playing can
"Microsoft announces Zune is rapidly approaching fifteen units sold." /Stolen joke //Yeah, I bet you can guess where I stole it from.
If 95 million did not work, sales would be zero right now. The fact sales continue to be good means failure rate is not anywhere near that high, or the devices are so much more desirable currently than any other player around that people re-buy them anyway. Either way, sales continue.
Since the Zune has had a rough time unseating the iPod, we can assume the case is much more of the former than the latter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's a coincidence, I found mine on an Air France flight!
This doesn't really surprise me. I know Google has purchased thousands of shuffles just as corporate giveaways, and I don't doubt that many other companies have done the same. The price point of the shuffles and nanos is so low that anyone can get their hands on them. And most people who have the hard disk-based iPods seem to have a smaller version as well for the gym, or whatever. Heck, we have received two shuffles as corporate giveaways, and we haven't even resold them. They're so small that we're just waiting to lose them, put them through the wash, or drop them in the toilet (actually, we have already dropped one in the toilet and it survived just fine). :)
Yeah I am talking to you. The talentless hack who think's they are a poweruser by referring to their Operating System as an "experience". The same person who relys and uses the hardwork of other's each and every day and goes back and spit on it because it doesn't come with a shiny interface. You shit on the efforts of open source while you and your company take from a BSD kernel. And you guys talk about elitism in the Linux world?! At least in the Linux world we provide people with the tools to learn. You Macintosh pseudo-artists just try to hold on to your low marketshare cheering and crying at the same time while Apple makes converts. I refuse to believe that all you frat boy mac love slaves possess Photoshop skills. Just uninstall it, you're wasting your daddy's money that he makes using a Windows platform. Oh and by the way, loading 5280 copies of a library is INEFFICIENT, not "just works". So you can take your Think Different(tm) philosophy and wipe your collective arses with it because you are all the same bunch of mouth breathers. Apple doesn't want or need an Apple Clickaround.
You're so right on the money.
This is the reason that Microsoft can be dethroned--when you have good design, you can beat the giants. When you have shitty design and you are a giant, your product doesn't sell (Zune, case in point).
This is why Apple is sending shivers through the phone industry with the iPhone.
I predict that 2008 will be the year of actually easy to use phones, because of the well-designed competition by the iPhone.
Thank you Apple for raising the bar.
Only if you count the 15 that Beve Stalmer bought
The number does seem hard and somewhat hard to believe but drawing from my own personal experiences with the ipod, I find the number to be realistic. I was given the ipod mini as a gift about 3 years ago and since that time, I have had to replace it 3 times and I don't think that I am the only one who has had to do this. Therefore, when apple says that they have sold over 100 million ipods, I tend to believe them.
I just got my iPod a week ago. Got an 8GB black Nano. Love it! I wanted a solid state player that could store at least 1,000 tracks and have enough room for podcasts. The Nano fit the bill for me.
The quality of the sound. .wav. Using your favourite wave editing program. invert the original wave file and then add it to each of the converted and reconverted files.
/ index.html
_ kids_right/index.html
MP3 is a terrible format, yes I know a lot of people tell me,"it's alright, I use the highest rate available", but it still sounds like excrement, with nasty high frequency artifacts that make my teeth jangle and destroyed dynamics.
Seriously I was in a nightclub a few weeks ago and they had installed an MP3 based music system and apart from all the high frequency narkiness that was giving me a headache the lack of dynamics made the resultant mix of songs so BORING that even the dedicated clubbers were getting turned off.
Apple on the other hand worked a bit harder on their codec and came up with something that did not destroy the music as much.
As I once wrote before try this test (With thanks to Paul D. Lehrman, of Mix Magazine and a teacher of audio).
take a mono wave file, convert it to both MP3 (any rate you choose), and 'MP4a'(Apples format).
Now convert both of these back to
For a perfect conversion there should be total cancellation,that is, to give an example, if you add the inverted wave file to the original wav file there will be nothing left over.
My experience is that the apple codec will leave a few specks on the graph but nothing more than a few clicks and pops will be audible.
The Mp3 codec will leave you with enough of the song behind that you will be able to recognise the track and even sing along with it.
Paul Lehrman from mix magazine goes into this in more detail and someone else may be kind enough to provide a pointer to the exact article.
But in the meantime here are some references from music industry professionals (not RIAA but the real ones who do the work and love music) :
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_consumer_conundrum
even students notice the difference :
http://mixonline.com/newmedia/internetaudio/audio
da da da dum indeed.
1, an original 40 GB model, died an early death. Then I bought a mini which I use once every three months in my car. I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times. Neither of us have ever bought any music through iTunes. All of my music was ripped from my CD collection or purchased from more reasonably priced online stores (with better music selections). iPod's are cool...for about give minutes. Then I want to go back to listening to NPR or actually talking to other people.
Last time I checked, the global population was 6,587,774,956, so that doesn't even scratch the surface. Try harder Apple!
I wonder how many IBM PC Juniors are in a dump/landfill/creek bed in China. Does it matter. Certainly any workable iPod is hung on a pocket of pre-teen/teen/yuppy in world. Even *broken* ones have value, see eBay.
Well likely the author got a dozen Zunes from microsoft for Christmas, and his family members are still like: Bo why you give me this shitty brown Zune? Why not one of those hip iPods?
Apple doesn't have to hand out *FREE* samples anymore, that sucks from his perspective...
Oh and Apple doesn't have to hand out MacBook Pros either to show how good os-x runs either...
It is not hard to believe that Apple has sold over 100 million iPods worldwide, when you take in a number of different factors. The first factor is that the iPod has the personal music industry dominated; whether it be the very effective opetating format or the the software (iTunes), Apple has it all and no other device comes close to challenging it. Also you must take into effect that the United States is not the only country who can generate large sales when it comes to technological purchases. Countries like Japan, China, South Korea, and Germany are all growing in their IT/TC areas, and the purchases of things like iPods becomes more and more frequent. Finally the iPod has had 3 generations now with a 4th to come, and within each generation the sales have been astronomical which leaves a worthy explanation of that 100 Million sold mark
....And not one sold into the Ballmer household.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
This is too stupid to comment on. ipods have won the battle 2 years ago - they will be the dominant music player for the next 20 years. Thats all. By next year the total will be 150 million, maybe more. if Macs grow at 30 percent for 10 years, Apple will be bigger than Microtrash. Watch it happen. They will then sell at least 60 million macs a year - thats 15 billion profit - more than M$ have ever made in a year. plus the iphone and the ipod - try 20 billion profit per year. Its called change - get used to it.
One hundred MEELLEEON iPods!
*bites pinky*
The first iPod came out 6 years ago. Obviously some of these are replacements for broken or obsolete iPods - just like with any other electronics device. Does it matter? No. A sold iPod is a sold iPod, and if Apple managed to sell an iPod to a person who lost or destroyed his or hers, it means they were satisfied enough with their iPod to buy from Apple again.
Personally, I've owned two different iPods. One of the original "mechanical wheel" iPods (which I sold - it still works), and an iPod nano (which obviously also still works, it's quite new).
Going by the poll on that page, anyway.
Apple sells 100 million iPods, joining a consumer electronics club with only the Sony Walkman and the Nintendo whatever, and of course Slashdotters can't deal with it. My original 5 GB had a battery go bad a few months after I lost it for about a month, and thus didn't recharge it. Should we strike that off the list, so it's only 99,999,999? Well, actually, I spent $30, replaced the battery, and then sold it when I bought my 20 GB model. That worked fine, but I replaced it with the 30 GB video iPod. I sold the 20 GB model. Since I sold them to friends, who were happy to get a cheap, $100 iPod in both cases, should you add the resold models?
The accountants added up all the sales and came up with 100 million. What's so hard to believe about that?
You know, President Bush has an iPod, and they released his playlists except for the top-secret podcasts he gets from Jesus. Do you hate America?
My 15GB model is not sufficient to hold all of the content that I have in my iTunes library.
Some is podcast based, and much of that I would not pay for if it was only available for purchase. Most of my content has been ripped from CD media. Just because I have a large library of MP3s doesn't mean that I've made copyright-violating copies of music.
Of course there are lots of folks who don't pay for music, but that doesn't mean that there are not lots of us who don't illegitimately download content from the web.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Most of the 100,000,000 iPods are minis and nanos. Those models are only a few years old. The way the sales took off during the 4G and mini time and then exploded with 5G and nano, most of the iPods ever sold were just sold in the last 2-3 years. The monochrome ones are just a drop in the bucket.
You should read up on the real story behind 100 Million iPods