p2pnet - rss feed: Doin’ the iPod Shuffle
p2pnet.net News:- Give Apple credit for not naming their new flash digital music portable the iPod Flash. It’s simple, but such naming has become too obvious. The iPod Shuffle, as their new unit is called, works better with marketing anyway by dismissing the importance of having a screen to display song titles.
As you may have guessed, the new unit doesn’t have a display, a notion that’s met with mixed reaction by some pundits already. But hey, who needs a screen anyway? You don’t really want to know the next song coming up, you want to be surprised. You know all the tunes you put in anyway, yadda, yadda.
Whether you think a display screen is important or not is a personal decision, one that’s no big deal if you simply don’t care. The important thing is if the player overall satisfies. If it can accomplish that without a screen, so be it.
The iPod Shuffle
The more interesting news on this new base iPod is the price of the unit, $99 for the 512MB unit and $149 for the 1GB unit. Those are very competitive prices. In fact they are lower than most of the competiton’s prices for similar capacity units, a surprise since Apple usually commands premium prices for their players.
For example here are the prices of these equivalent new players from other manufacturers:
- Creative Technologies charges for its new Muvo Micro N200 flash unit $99 for 256MB and $179 for its 1GB model.
- The MPIO FL300 - also sans screen - charges $99.99 for 128MB and $129.99 for 256 MB.
- The SanDisk Digital Audio Player costs $99.99 for 256MB, $149.99 for 512MB and $199.99 for 1GB
- The Jens of Sweden MP-400 costs $500 for its 1GB unit, $1,199.00 for the one that is gold-plated.
- The Sony Sports costs $230 for 256MB.
- The Sony NW-E99 costs $300 for 1GB.
- The Samsung Yepp T5V runs $249 for the 1GB unit.
In every single case the iPod Shuffle is cheaper! Never expected that, not from Apple.
The competition didn’t expect it either. Pricing becomes the main draw for these units and with the iPod branding I have no doubt it will be another strong seller for Apple. As for the competition above, look for price cuts from most of them as the iPod certainly does not need an advantage there.
Creative Technologies recently announced big sales of their players including "phenomenal" sales of its Muvo line. That suggests that Creative did very well in the sub $200 market where Apple previously did not play in (until today their cheapest player was $250). Apple is playing in it now and they are selling for less.
Personally, I’ll take an extra few hundred MBs of space over a display any day. So would most people I expect.
A few more stats on the iPod shuffle. It weighs 0.78 ounces and is encased in a thin 3.3 x 0.33 x 0.98-inch white body. The battery gets 12 hours of life per charge. The unit is in stock at Apple stores now as well as being online.
Rich Menta - MP3Newswire.net
January 13th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Your competitor pricing information is incorrect. I purchased the Sony NW-E99 (1GB) for $200 from Sony’s website about a month ago. It is a great device, very functional and stylish, and it has a small display which I believe makes a big difference. Also, I think Apple made a mistake by using rechargable batteries. They generally have poor lifespan, and a disposable 1 aaa battery is much more convienent for the traveler.
-MP
February 11th, 2005 at 1:52 am
I purchased my 512 mb MuVo N200 for $118 about a week ago. That’s only $18 more than an Ipod Shuffle and it comes with a screen, radio and a bunch of other things your Shuffle can’t do.