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iPods and MP3's: A Tale Of Two Players
Electronics | Dec 9, 05
In this critical shopping period, many of you may have been hoping for drops in the prices of what has to be two of this year's hottest items, those being the iPod Nano and iPod Video players. And in the way of holiday cheer in this regard, I can offer you this. Zilch. Nada. Zippo. The fact is that while the price of the now discontinued Mini had indeed dropped significantly (see "iPods: Less Video, Less Money"), neither the Nano nor the Video iPod showed anything but rock-solid price support through Black Friday and beyond. The fact that vendors have these models in stock and haven't seen the need to cut prices (so far) may be testament to strong demand and Apple's greater success at managing production volume. 
Now some analysts have suggested that firm iPod demand was boosting sales of other MP3 players as well (on 12/8 the Wall Street Journal noted Bear Stearn's Andrew Neff as saying as much in a letter to clients). This may be true, but this supportive effect may not extend to non-iPod players' prices, some of which have been falling sharply in the lead-up to the peak shopping period. Consider the SanDisk Sansa E140 MP3 Player with FM tuner and SD card slot, currently the most popular MP3 player on our site. Back in June, this model cost as much as $200, but the low price on PriceSCAN has fallen from about $135 at that time to under $96 today.
Time Period: 6/6/2005 through 12/5/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Perhaps the bottom line is that Apple's technology and "cool" factor is insulating it from the need for price reduction that must be made to keep up demand. Or, in the case of the video iPod and its ever increasing available library of network fare, maybe a tiny screen is no deterrent to purchase when, soon, one might hold in one's hand the genius that is “My Name Is Earl.”
Posted by jeffrey.trester (Permalink)
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