Charles on… anything that comes along

1) Spoke to a senior electronics buyer at John Lewis the other day and mentioned the iPod’s amazing popularity in the US, with the NPD Survey the other day saying it has a 92% market share. “Yes,” he said. “Same for us - 90 per cent of the hard-disk MP3 player market.”

2) A company (not Apple) recently sent out a marketing email with the brave sales-boosting promise: let us come and pitch our product to you for an hour and we’ll give you an iPod. 100 people took them up. However when the company that had made the marketing pitch then approached Apple for a bulk buy, Apple couldn’t come through with the requisite iPod supply (”demand has been too great”). So the company emailed those still waiting - quite a large number - and offered them the choice: wait an unknown time for an iPod, or accept another hard-drive MP3 player.
Everyone has chosen to wait.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• "After the iPod - isn't that like asking what's after the book"? Nice to get misunderstood... (30 July 2005; score: 38.96%)
• Wow, that's Microsoft territory: 92% of HD MP3 players sold in US are iPods (13 October 2004; score: 36.13%)
• That wheezing noise? It's Portable Media Centers (or Centres) (24 July 2004; score: 34.33%)

As I sort-of predicted back on September 19, ’tis the season for Apple to update its iBook. (Well, I said then it was “either [next] Tuesday or October”, which I agree leaves a lot of wiggle room. Still, baby steps…)

As Paul W points out in email, PowerBook updates can’t be far behind, as the fastest iBook now nips at the low-end PowerBook’s heels, and as Gizmodo notes, the top-end 14″ iBook is as fast as the 12-inch Powerbook, albeit with slightly slower memory but with an arguably better video card. And marketing, as we all know, abhors an overlap. (Marketing is at ease with vacuums, because they represent “challenges” or, more positively “opportunities” - though as one weary IBMer once commented, “Sure, but some opportunities are insurmountable.”)

Studying the Mac Buyer’s Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac suggests that the PowerBooks could come up to 16 days after the iBooks (if they follow their average delay-between-update times).

Oh, and one last thing: I’m not expecting these to be G5 Powerbooks. If Apple announces - as many are expecting - the G5PB in January, the new machine will have to be priced at a sizeable premium over the G4s. But that’s quite possible: nobody thought there was demand for a super-big-screen laptop until the 17″ PowerBook. A superfast, supersized G5 machine will be pricey - and it’ll sell.

(Update Weds 13:28: later news suggests there won’t be new PowerBooks before January; see the comments.)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Take two buttons into the shower? No, I'll have four and a clicking sound please (2 August 2005; score: 41.51%)
• New PowerBooks: your educated guess is as good as mine (but it's Tuesday or October) (19 September 2004; score: 37.87%)
• Here in Exeter, it's Ethernet madness (6 September 2004; score: 35.17%)

Met Nigel Hawthorn of Blue Coat Systems (they do various forms of enterprise filtering), who was recalling the mad days of the dot-com boom, as the company has been around for six years (formerly as Cacheflow).

At one stage growth was 40% per quarter and they didn’t know how they would find staff; then of course it all stopped.

“We thought we could walk on water. And then we drowned.” (Though they’re OK now; profitable, even.)

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• 'I got a trip to Addis Ababa because of Michael Jackson's nose' (8 July 2004; score: 24.96%)
• Are you saying Apple's customers are thieves, Mr Ballmer? (4 October 2004; score: 21.24%)
• Will Wippit whip Sony at the 'iTunes for movies' game? (28 April 2005; score: 19.57%)