Switched On: iPod flash wouldn't realize downmarket dreams
posted December 8th 2004 2:20PM
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a weekly column about the future of technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:The last Switched On discussed how MP3 has been slow to come to many traditional audio products, with many home and car-based offerings from traditional audio companies pricing north of $1,000. Ironically, digital audio, which has been widely heralded as democratizing music, has remained elusively expensive for most consumers, and that assumes that they already have the requisite PC.
Of course, MP3 is not really the villain. It's the storage media. While hard disks offer better price/performance than flash, they still have a minimum price hurdle that currently translates to about $250 for a portable player. This is why there's been so much discussion of the possibility of Apple entering the flash market. There are a few good reasons why Apple should stay away, though.
Entering the flash player market would signify a philosophical �switch� as profound as that of its allegedly chemically enhanced former spokesteen and �really good paper� author Ellen Feiss. Apple designed the iPod around a hard disk to compensate for the limitations of flash. However, Apple has already strayed from its original �all your music all the time� message with the successful iPod mini.
Flash players have also reached higher capacities since the iPod was introduced, but not at prices dramatically below that of the lightest iPods. The large capacity of iPods led Apple to encode iTunes songs at 128 kbps as opposed to the 64 kbps WMA files that at the time were suggested for flash players. You hear less and less these days about the iTunes Music Store as an elaborate marketing vehicle for hardware. If it wants to sell songs, more capacity is better.
Apple could steal flash market share from iRiver and Rio, but do these customers care so much about the iPod brand that they wouldn�t shell out for an iPod mini? Flash players continue to sell well at mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and price clubs, but these stores have never been especially strong for Apple. On the other hand, one of the best things about the iPod for Apple is that it�s given the company a chance to start with a clean slate, as demonstrated by its HP partnership.
One advantage that a flash iPod could have over competing devices is Apple�s proprietary but currently unbranded digital interface port, which has spurred a wide array of unique accessories. An inexpensive flash iPod that included such a port could pave the way for lower-end docking accessories such as alarm clocks, integrated �street-style� headphones, or even shower radios. While the markets for these may be limited for now, they have more mainstream appeal than the watches and sunglasses that already include MP3 players.
Aiwa�s AZ-BS32 �water-resistant speaker�, in fact, used a similar principle, but with a misguided USB flash drive-like device called PAVIT (which in retrospect must have stood for Problematic And Vastly Ignored Technology) that also worked in a portable player. While as underpowered and overpriced as many of the MP3 players previously discussed, it�s a good deal more elegant than the monstrous Sharper Image MP3-CD shower radio. Sales of such accessories would need to be speculative, though, because they probably wouldn�t work with the installed base of hard disk-based iPods.
Like embedded processors, flash memory has a bright future in improving the functionality of everyday devices, but not for holding music libraries, particularly for those trying to build businesses on expanding those digital collections. Music�s future, much like its past, rests on spinning platters.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld, a division of market research and analysis provider The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On, however, are his own. Feedback is welcome at fliptheswitch@gmail.com.
the point of these things is not to make money themselves, but to keep the competition at bay.. entry-level is about the competition, not the customer...
for what it's worth, apple could sell a 2 Gig a 4 Gig and a 6 Gig iPod mini and that, at 225, 250 and 275.. would be a great lineup.. there would be options be people would basically take the 4 gig and the 20 gig player at 299 USD... so apple could supply accordingly..
if you ignore the flash market altogether.. you get annoying abberations like, apple has 65% of digital player market. When you consider the cost of these dinky 64MB players.. it's really annoying.. and these flash players are really keeping WMA alive.. so Apple wants to go after them..
I think the author may be missing the point on flash based players. Sure, in the short term they will not have a much storage capacity as hard disks, but they will equal hard disks in a year or 2. The main benifits of flash is obvious, battery life, access times, and durability. The battery life of a iPod flash with a single AAA battery could be north of 200 hours. The access times to retrieve file info could be greatly reduced as its solid state memory. And the durability and life expectency of a iPod flash would be much greater then 2-4 years of current iPods, since flash memory doesn't have the built in hazards of hard disks.
Sure, you may have to live with on 1gb or 2gbs at launch, but thats only 1/4 or 1/2 of the iPod mini. I would much rather have 1/2 the space but 192 more playing hours and 10 more years of usability.
To add to the previous readers comments, one of the great things about some of the current crop of flash based players is that built in expandability through MMC/SD cards. Being able to bump up the capacity to at least 1gb now and more later is a huge adavantage for the budget minded. Especially considering if you consider that 1gb SD cards can be had for as little as $50 these days.
Plus the real value that Apple brings to the table is UI and design. Without the click wheel and the user friendly UI I don't think the iPod-HD would be the runaway success it is. An apple flash based player must incorporate these two capabilities to have any chance of real success.
Rubin does indeed miss the point. Apple has two choices. Either they open up the iTunes store to other players or they cover both the flash and the HD markets. Since we're talking about Apple, forget option one...
Potential customers for the flash based iPod aren't iRiver and Rio customers (unless they happen to hate their current product) but every iPod owner already out there. I'd buy one for $150 in a heartbeat. My 40 gig will travel with me and dock to my travel speakers and carry my backup files and photos and contacts and yes, a big chunk of my music. But the iPod micro will be my gym accessory.
And it will be the perfect gift from iPod owners to the uninitiated for under $200 (I'm hoping for a $100 - 512 mb one). Then later some of those people might want to upgrade to a regular iPod... It's really very very smart of Apple to go down that road.
And 5 years from now? Please! Who knows? Who cares?!
The author may have missed the point on flash advantages, but I think the previous commentator missed the point on cost: yes, flash memory prices have been declining, but so have the price/physical size of hard drives. So while it may be possible to make a flash-based player at the capacity of the current iPod mini at a reasonable price within 'a year or two', by then the iPod mini will probably have double its current capacity, or more. HD's have held the price/capacity advantage over non-volatile memory since the days of bubble memory, and I don't see any signs that this will change in the near future.
One other thing I'd note: I'm one of the people who thinks a major factor in the iPod's success has been the capacity factor. If a player isn't big enough to hold a major chunk of my library, it's just about worthless - and I say this as someone who's had (and tried to make work) an original Rio 500, MP3 CDs with a laptop, and an original Nomad Jukebox, in addition to a couple of iPods. The frustration factor of 'the song I want isn't loaded!' is just too high.
good gord, do people not learn from the past? ipod - "oh it's too expensive. it'll never sell". ipod mini "oh it's too expensive. it'll never sell". ipod micro "oh it's too _________" or "oh it's not ___________". perhaps this'll be a flop. it has happened before, but really steve & co. haven't had a real clunker since the cube and that was more of a price issue. their big problem isn't releasing dodgy kit, but a) producing enough of it, b) convincing people the kit really is great (other of course than the ipod)
-- Potential customers for the flash based iPod
-- aren't iRiver and Rio customers (unless they
-- happen to hate their current product) but every
-- iPod owner already out there. I'd buy one for
-- $150 in a heartbeat. My 40 gig will travel with
-- me and dock to my travel speakers and carry my
-- backup files and photos and contacts and yes, a
-- big chunk of my music. But the iPod micro will
-- be my gym accessory.
Good point.
Kap
I bought a 40 GB iPod because it has 40 GB. I refuse to consider even an iPod Mini because of storage capacity.
But not everyone is like me, I know that, and I am sure that if Apple comes up with a flash based player, it will do just fine.
Now, I would certainly buy an Apple iPod-cellphone ;-)
I think this only proves the insanity attached to the iPod. Why would you pay $100-$150 for an ugly white (I don't like white), over-priced, under-featured Flash Player? There's *SO* many good Flash players out there, with Screens and great features, why would anyone want Apple's little overpriced thumbdrive? Is it because of the Scrollwheel? What good is a scrollwheel without a screen?
And why does Peter start by saying that MP3 access in Traditional music devices is expensive? $1000 or more??? What planet has he been living on? Over half the Boom boxes and stereo systems in Walmart and Target can play MP3s. You can't throw a rock in Best Buy without hitting something that plays MP3's. Almost *ALL* DVD players can play back MP3. You can even get cellphones that play MP3's! And NONE of these cost anywhere near $1000! Of course, if you come from a Apple world, then *EVERYTHING* is expensive. But for the rest of us, devices that play MP3's are a dime a dozen. I count at least 10 items in my room alone that can play MP3's, and I didn't pay more then $200 for any of them.
Oh, my bad. The article was written by Ross Rubin. Sorry Pete!
Meh, most of the people who read this blog are techies, so they get 40GB because they know how to manage and manipulate 40Gb's of music. Apple's not aiming at us techies with the flash player - we all know ourselves that we don't want it, and think it's useless - but for common Joe, a cheap player that has back forward pause/play and nothing else is great for the end consumer who really really doesn't care or want these fancy complicated and confusing features on other flash players. You buy an MP3 player because you want to listen to music, not because you want or need anything else. I think this will be a winner, regardless of the complaints.