ipod - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

Once again, Apple has started a new year by announcing a plethora of exciting goodies for technophiles, with the long anticipated iPhone taking centre stage.

As a fairly committed early adopter (I have not used a paper diary since 21st December 1996 – yes I do know the date exactly, because my latest Palm based PDA has all my diary entries since then), I am already drooling.

In an article called ‘Zune: Falling Down On Cool’ BusinessWeek savages the forthcoming Microsoft device, predicting that “by this time next year, it will be considered a dismal failure”.

And the reason why it will fail? Because it isn’t cool, and neither is Microsoft, says BusinessWeek. It adds that attempting to become cool is the only reason that Microsoft is launching the Zune in the first place.

Authored by Arik Hesseldahl, the article states that “the Zune will be seen for what it is: a me-too product that is expressing Microsoft's envy at not being cool”.

Maybe so, but business isn’t really about ‘being cool’. 'Cool' helps with product marketing and customer aqcuisition, but product quality and lifespan are key to customer retention, recommendations, and repeat business.

In an attempt to gain advantages for its Zune music player over the almighty iPod, Microsoft has agreed a new deal with Universal Music.

This deal with give Universal a cut of the profits from sales of Microsoft’s iPod rival, the Zune. In return, Microsoft will receive rights to distribute content to Zune’s users for limited wireless sharing.

This could be a gamechanger for Apple, which has so far avoided cutting this sort of deal with content owners.

It is five years to the day that Apple launched the almighty iPod. The device has undoubtedly transformed the way many of us buy and listen to music. In the last five years, 68 million iPods have been sold, and the company holds a staggering 75% share of the market.

Alongside the iPod's success, its companion service iTunes now holds 88% of the legal music download market and is now more than breaking even, according to Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer.

Richard Menta at mp3newswire has been reviewing potential ‘iPod killers’ since 2004 and he rounds up the potential challengers for Apple’s crown in the run up to the Christmas shopping season.

Of the 149 portable MP3 players he has reported on in the past two years, not one has yet managed to dent the popularity of Apple’s device, which has become a generic name for the MP3 player.

Apple boss Steve Jobs has laughed off fears over Microsoft’s threat to the iPod through its upcoming digital music player, Zune.

In a smart move by Apple, the company has released details of an audit done on an iPod factory in China. The audit came in response to accusations of "sweatshop" conditions by the Mail on Sunday.

According to the audit the supplier was “in compliance in the majority of the areas audited. However, we did find violations to our Code of Conduct, as well as other areas for improvement that we are working with the supplier to address.” What follows in the report is a breakdown of the audit methodology and selected results.

I was given an iPod as a birthday gift a couple of years ago. Immediately, I fell in love with it, and it revolutionised my listening habits. It looks good, it is easy to use, and my particular model stored 5,000 songs, about half of my CD-based music collection.

But my love affair quickly turned sour. Over time, I have experienced various problems with the iPod and iTunes, some of which are listed after the jump.