Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

6 of 241 comments (clear)

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

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

  2. "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.
  3. 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.

  4. 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.
  5. 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...

  6. 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.