$100 ipods

Macintosh rumor mills are working overtime churning out pieces of $100 iPod devices from Apple to be announced at next week's MacWorld.

It turns out Apple was selling $100 iPods last year. College students who bought PowerBooks, iMacs and iBooks were able to add 10 GB iPods to their orders for $100 ..

By most accounts the iPod had a great Christmas season and some indirect measures of the iTunes store suggest impressive results. Apple needs to follow this up with something big and a $100 (or $150 or even $200) iPod would probably be the thing to pull a few million sales in the next quarter. A high quality low-end player that works with the iTunes store is probably the best defense against Microsoft's entry into the market. A good first step would be to keep the interface.

But is a low price really possible?

It should be noted that moving towards flash memory probably doesn't make sense for Apple. A $100 or $150 drive would have very little storage as flash is very expensive per MB compared to rotating media. One could imagine a new 5GB model, although it would be difficult to do this for anything more than $200 when you look at component costs for 1.8" drives (unless something dramatic has happened). At the smaller size there are options like the 1.5 GB Cornice drive, but that has numerous issues. A more reasonable solution may be the one inch Hitachi (2GB with rumors of more soon), but it is highly constrained and spendy. I can't imagine making a unit for less than $200 with it - perhaps $250.

So it seems very unlikely to me that Apple will come out with a bargain unit as the technology just isn't there. They would have to compromise something. That leaves them with a new class or player and/or bundling.

Next Tuesday will be interesting no matter what happens.

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Speaking of music, ITMS is beginning to offer Doo-Wop. Sukie will be thrilled.

Comments

[Pookie]

Ummm, I guess you're right. But it would be thrilling if they could come out with a nice $100 iPod......