Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

iPod Touch: Mixed Reviews

Posted in Apple by Elliott Back on September 6th, 2007.

Apple released new models of their iPods, including the much anticipated iPod Touch, a bridge between the classic 5G iPod and the new touch-sensitive iPhone:

ipod-touch.jpg

The 16GB Touch goes for $399, and has wifi, the new Starbucks tunes, the new iTunes wifi store, Safari, youtube, and a 3.5″ screen. Essentially, it’s an iPhone with the twice the memory and none of the phone features. It’s also missing Google maps, Yahoo mail, and widgets.

The stock dropped $7.60 yesterday as the markets tried to digest the fracturing of Apple’s product lines, the massive iPhone price cut, and the new iPods. I’m happy about the price cut, as clearly the iPhone is not a massive success at the $599 price. However, I believe that apple should have cut the regular iPod and iPod nano lines entirely, replacing them with the new iPod Touch. Instead, their product strategy indicates that they’re not sure what people want to buy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is tagged with google maps, 5g ipod, iphone price, new ipod touch, new ipods, youtube, google, iphone, massive success, mail, product strategy, itunes, widgets, starbucks, safari, tunes, bridge, apple, models, memory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 13 Comments

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    Cutting the regular ipod and nano lines wouldn't be a great idea - the choice allows consumers to decide which item fulfils their needs, and also to purchase according to pricepoint.

    Personally, I have no use for a video ipod, let alone the ipod Touch - I'm happy with my shuffle, may consider upgrading to a nano.

    I want something small, portable, easy to use, not overloaded with hundreds of features, and that I don't have to constantly be worried will scratch or whatever.
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    Every single Apple earnings conference call you hear them say the same thing. Product mix, product mix, product mix. They might be going a little overboard here with the iPod classic staying in the lineup, but I think they've been very successful at segmentation in the past yet aren't scared to quickly adapt to market conditions (i.e. dropped iPhone 4G and price drop).

    Don't forget, margins on the iPod classic are probably through the roof.
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    How is the iPhone not a massive success? Apple never promised to have sold a million units in their first month - this is what the massive hype machine said would happen. Apple said they wanted to sell a million units by the end of the quarter, which they are well on track to do.

    The same hype machine then feigned shock and horror because of this unrealistic "first month" target not being met. It stinks of stock manipulation - these people know the effect that their announcements have on Apple stock. Buy some stock, announce apple being on track to sell a million units in the first month, sell high - then announce sales "disappointments" when Apple doesn't meet the rediculous targets set by you, buy some more stock at the new, low price and wait for the next over hyped Apple rumour to surface. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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    Discontinue the video and nano?? Are you serious??

    The iPod Touch has 16gb of storage (max). In case you are not familiar with the general concepts of mp3 players: that is not much. Standard iPods have had more for years; the video iPod that the Touch would have replaced, under your scenario, had 80gb - five times has much.

    Also, perhaps you are not aware of this, but the Touch costs at least $300 (8gb version); the nano costs much less. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with pricepoints and budgets, but Apple markets to Earthlings, who are acquainted with such notions.

    The Touch is a compelling device. I may buy one tomorrow, to supplement my prev-gen 60gb Video. But it lacks the capacity to make demanding users totally happy, and is double the price at which much of the market exists. Seriously, have you ever owned any mp3 player?
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    Love the idea of the ipod touch biut not sure if I am excited about the new line of gadgets from Apple. Something scary in the direction over at my favorite company indicates to me that they may no longer have a grasp on what the consumer wants and at what price. Too much too soon.
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    There is one application missing which would make me pick the iPod touch - "Mail". Without this application in the iPod touch, it is missing a tremendous amount of utility. So I would have to go with the Classic. The Touch also doesn't have enough memory to hold my music, photo's and the random video I may want to watch while travelling.
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    Are you aware that the iphone outsold all other smartphones (including blackberries) and is on par with the sales rate of sales-leading-joe-average-basic phones since its release? A newcomer to the field outselling the existing heavyweights is a massive success own its own.

    "Put an idoit in charge of idiots and both will act like idiots,
    Put a leader in charge, you won't know he is leading idiots."
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    If you think blackberrie is the most selling smartphone you might look at Nokias this quarter report.

    Nokia sold 1.5M N95 GPS phones in Q2 2007

    http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/index.php?action...

    Nokia sold 100.8 million phones during the second quarter and that figure is more than Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson sold combined.

    http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/spotlight-n...
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    I think you'll find that the 2nd figure is global. 1m handsets in one country (its not even the N. America region) - Is pretty startling. To put that in perspective, the Nintendo wii has just reached 1m units in the UK after 8-odd months (this is a unit that was constantly out of stock for its entire life so far). Both logistically, and technologically Apple has done well. As an aside, this figure was reached when the handset was at a very full price.
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    (Author) Elliot Back & Larry: The iPod touch does have Google Maps and Mail. They're called the internet. Does anyone NOT have a web-based email address these days?

    There's something about being able to sit at the bar and track my fantasy football team, check GMail and GCal, and find my a shortcut home with Google Maps on a wicked cool music player that makes me drool over this. While it would be nice to have my entire music library on an internet enabled iPod, that's just not going to happen right now on a hard drive player due to battery life issues. Besides, I doubt that the average iPod owner comes close to filling up even an 8GB iPod.

    While no one iPod is for everyone, there is at least one iPod for everyone.
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    who cares im gettin one
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    I would agree with Scotty on this one. The internet makes the iPod touch capable of several things the iPhone can do without being tied to AT&T! Not everyone wants a phone with their music/web/video player. PLUS not everyone wants to have to sign up for a service like AT&T when they already have a phone or are on a family plan (like me and other college students)... that's about all i have to say. I'm going to pick up the 16 GB model and enjoy the web, music and video without the obligations of a 2 year contract and receiving calls in the middle of the climax of a movie.
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    plz, could anyone tell me how to download porn on safari iPod touch? I'm a sex addict. Thhaaank you lol ^^
 

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