iPod mini
Just when in looked like Apple might hit the ball out of the park and totally take over the portable mp3 player market, they go and announce today the iPod mini — a smaller, less expensive version of the regular white iPod.
Smaller? Less expensive? Sounds great, right? Yes, unless you happen to have more than an elementary school level proficiency in basic arithmetic. The iPod mini retails for $249 — a mere $50 less than the entry level iPod. What does $50 off buy you? A hard drive that is nearly four times smaller (4GB instead of 15GB), which translates into 2700 less songs for you to listen to.
Sure, the iPod mini sports some new skin colors, and has a form factor about the size of a business card. Otherwise it is nearly the same as the regular iPod but with far less capacity and a ridiculous price tag.
If Apple could push the form factor’s limits and include a 4GB hard drive, surely they could have offered a 2GB for $150. Or hell, how about a 1GB version (which would hold about 10 albums or so) for $99?
But perhaps my attention should be refocused — maybe the cost of the iPod has hardly anything to do with hard drives or their total capacity, but with the interface (which includes the display, the OS, and the navigational widgets) Apple wraps around it. Perhaps the outer form factor (which is now famous, and Apple obviously wants to duplicate) is so expensive to produce, that dropping a anything less than a 4GB drive into the iPod mini wouldn’t make any difference at all in the retail price. From a production / manufacturing perspective, that sounds plausible.
Keep many of the same elements from the main iPod — the screen, the OS, etc. — pull them off the same assembly line (which keeps overall costs low and profit margins higher), put them in the mini, slap a coat of paint on it, offer it for $50 less and hope that consumers will be so blown over by the size and color that they forget all basic math skills and impulsively slap down their credit cards.
Apple had a golden opportunity at this MacWorld to release an iPod “for the masses” — the ones unwilling to pony up more than $200 for a music player, but are very interested in using the iTunes Music Store. For me, they blew it. Perhaps a time will come soon when they can lower the price of the iPod mini even farther, but right now it’s a target-less consumer product that fails simple logic.
