More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Walkman over iPod

Hartford Courant: "According to Sony, about 50 million Walkmans had been manufactured by the device's 10-year anniversary. In contrast, Apple had shipped about 3 million iPods by the end of 2003, two years after its debut, accounting for about half of the market for MP3 players. 'For all the general excitement (about the iPod), it's still a pretty small market,' said David Card, an analyst at Jupiter Research, a technology tracking firm. 'It's totally a New York and Silicon Valley thing.' 'It's a relatively inexpensive status symbol in comparison to a Rolex. There's a certain fashion statement that people are making with these, but I don't think that's driving it,' Card said. Instead, buyers have responded to the iPod's sleek and functional design, its capacity for massive amounts of music and its array of functions, allowing users to store data or even DJ a party with it."

I'm not sure I agree with this. While the sheer number of cassette- and CD-based Walkman (and Walkman-like) devices out there dwarfs the number of iPods, there is no doubt that Apple has rejuvinated the portable audio market in the same way that Nintendo did with the video game market in the late 1980's (after companies like Atari, Mattel, and Coleco crashed in 1983). OK, they weren't there first, but the iPod is very much a societal phenomenon and needs to be acknowledged as such.

[ Posted at 11:12 AM | Permalink ]