James Delahunty
23 Feb 2005 9:36
Apple has expanded its iPod family of products. A new iPod mini can now hold 6GB instead of the previous 4GB storage. The company also said that it's gold coloured version of the mini would be dropped. There has also been the addition of the 30GB version of the iPod photo. Previous iPod photo models could store 20GB. All new models also have extended battery life and costs have dropped by an average of £40. The iPod took an early and quick lead in the portable digital music player market.
25 million portable music players were sold in 2004, which includes 10 million iPods. The success has been mostly due to the iTunes music store which currently has about 70% of the digital music download market. Mike McGuire, a research director at analyst Gartner said Apple had done a good job in "sealing off the market from competition" so far. "They have created a very seamless package which I think is the idea of the product - the design, function and the software are very impressive," he said.
However, there is always the threat of competition. "Creative, other Microsoft-partnered devices, Real, Sony and so on, are racketing up the marketing message and advertising," McGuire said. "Creative was very upbeat about how many of its Creative Zen players it had shipped by the end of last year", he said.
Source:
BBC News