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100 Million iPods

Posted by samzenpus on from the that's-a-lot-of-music dept.

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."

20 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory. by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    "No wireless. More space than a Zune. Lame."
    - CmdrBallmer

  2. Lame. by cgrayson · · Score: 4, Funny

    No wireless. Less space than 100 million nomads. Lame.

    --
    Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
  3. "Sold" probably includes them all by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Generally the management of these numbers is designed to make sales numbers look good. There is nothing stopping warantee replacement units being reflected as a zero-dollar sale, so long as you don't mess with the actual revenue numbers.

    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.
    1. Re:"Sold" probably includes them all by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It all depends on how the numbers are reported.

      Many companies run their service centres as a seperate business unit because that's simpler. I don't know if Apple do this, but they might. If they do, then replacement units get sold to the service centres who then charge a service fee back to the ipod business unit. This is a far neater way to handle stock levels etc.

      Regardless, I do agree that they have no need to pump up sales numbers. They're doing fine with no embellishment.

      --
      Engineering is the art of compromise.
  4. A bit of perspective by remove+office · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:A bit of perspective by osu-neko · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've been gifted a Shuffle, and I've gifted iPod nanos to two people. And I'd bought a regular iPod which I later sold.

      So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.

      Huh? No, according to Apple, based on what you've said, you've purchased 3 (someone else purchased one and gifted it to you, but there's no way they'd know that it ended up in your hands, so by their count, you've only purchased three, because in fact, you've only purchased three). And how does the fact that you purchased three iPods skew the stats about the number of iPods sold? You purchased three, they count that has having sold three. 3 != 3?

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  5. The value of good user interface design... by The+Media+Mechanic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:The value of good user interface design... by JohnnyComeLately · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Yeppers. I had a Toshiba GigABeat and ended up taking it back to get the 80Gb Video. It just works well. No lock into their download format or archaic DRM. Accessories are plentiful (the main reason I switched back...I had a Nano before) and function is intuitive. Like you mention, I don't even need to take it out of my pocket to "pause" it when I am done riding/running/whatever and don't want the battery to drain from leaving it on by accident.

      People love to naysay the dominant market player, which is ironically the one getting trounced in the OS realm. I really do hope their new agreement for higher quality music takes off. I'm going to soon buy a permanent dock to dock my iPod with my high-end home audio system. So the new format will be greatly appreciated and I don't mind paying a few extra $$ for a high-def quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon.

    2. Re:The value of good user interface design... by joek1010 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "bad firmware"

      That's not quite true. http://www.1418hell.com/ (Now offline due to bandwidth restrictions). Here's the apple docs on it (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30 4508). Switching to iTunes 7 caused major problems for a lot of people (me included). For about 2 weeks I basically had a bricked iPod; I couldn't restore because there were major problems with the iTunes 7 and its new integrated iPod management.

      I've also had major problems with Apple Firmware updates on my 60 gb 5G ipod. After updating firmware, I regularly find that Apple has dropped support for a specific video resolution or bit rate (the iPod is ridiculously temperamental with video support), which means half of the videos on my iPod don't work.

      Now I don't ever upgrade my firmware; I'm really not missing out on much I guess.

    3. Re:The value of good user interface design... by Skippy_kangaroo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >and I don't mind paying a few extra $$ for a high-def quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon

      Why dont you pay $10 for the CD and make a lossless rip of it using, say, Apple Lossless for use on your stereo? And then have a 192kbps VBR AAC rip for your iPod when its on the go and you care about quantity rather than too much quality? All without DRM.

  6. Oh, and the actual article by Adambomb · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  7. Re:But What About... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all iPods are created equal."

    I have a dream that my iPods will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their case but by the content of their hard drive.

    Let music ring.

  8. Hmm by chebucto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  9. Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go by yada21 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Cammas have, another use, to indicate, a pause. You are, William Shatner, AICMFP.

    --
    I will have a sig when the market demands it.
  10. Not sure why it's so hard to believe. by Americano · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    The press release doesn't say that there are 100 million units presently in use by 100 million people around the world today, now, right here. It says that they've moved 100 million ipods. Some percentage of that 100 million has surely been broken, been stolen, been lost, been destroyed, etc. Some percentage is probably sitting on a desktop somewhere and almost never gets used. But the total number sold apparently is over 100 million.

    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.
  11. I Don't Love You by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Funny

    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. The company returned this guy's iPod with the following message: "Not faulty. Supposed 'horrible screeching noise' turned out to be My Chemical Romance's latest single."
    --
    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  12. Perspective by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  13. Comma problems? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  14. Coincidence by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Funny

    * What's the exact figure of how many iPods have been lost (I once left mine on an Air France flight) or stolen?


    That's a coincidence, I found mine on an Air France flight!
  15. Microsoft can be dethroned by Uksi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.