Last week, Apple Computer held a giant press conference in London to herald the opening of the iTunes Music Store, the company’s revolutionary music download site. Alicia Keys turned up to play piano, the Apple founder Steve Jobs delivered a typically passionate speech, and assembled guests trotted off home clutching gift vouchers to try out the online shopping experience for themselves.
Five years ago, reports of a similar Apple gathering would have made the specialist press, or been buried in a dark corner of a broadsheet. This time, it was front-page news. What happened? In a word — iPod.
For the uninitiated, an iPod is a hand-held jukebox. Small enough to take anywhere, it can hold up to 10,000 songs encoded in compressed digital format. You can buy your music through iTunes on an Apple Macintosh or Windows PC, transfer it to your iPod and be listening to it at the bus-stop within a couple of minutes. These pocket-sized pleasure zones have become the first must-have accessory of the 21st century. And Apple, at one time seen as a doomed sprat in the global ocean of computing, is on a high.
“We’ve long been a provider of platforms that musicians and artistic people enjoy,” says Peter Lowe, Apple’s director of marketing for applications and services. “Now we’ve expanded that to a broader market of people who love to consume music, and it has opened up Apple to people who might not have considered us before. You see something like the iPod, you try it and you start to think, ‘Hey, wait a minute, if this company puts this much effort into fit and finish for a product costing a few hundred dollars, maybe I should take a look at their computers.’”
If only all people were so predictable. Some, it seems, have a relationship with their music machines that verges on the obsessive. For them, the iPod is nothing less than a high-tech teddy bear. A strange analogy? Perhaps. But if, like myself, you’re not a “Poddie”, then ponder the similarities with me.
Once it was our teddies that we perched in precarious tourist spots around the globe and told to smile for the camera. Not now. Oh no. Now people take their sleek little iPod comforters along for the ride instead. Pictures are taken in destinations including Ross Island, Antarctica, Barcelona and a volleyball court on Long Beach, Thailand, and posted on ipodlounge.com, an independent website dedicated to all things iPod. Not only are iPods photogenic, they are — like a faithful teddy — always there for you, even if they do need a four-hour battery charge after you have been using them for eight hours and (possibly) a new battery after 18 months (a replacement costs about £50).
Like Pooh Bear, iPods curve in all the right places and provide endless amounts of comfort. In short, they are everyone’s new best friend. And, naturally, iPods come with an attractive little jacket. The youthful Christian Dior designer Hedi Slimane has even created a cover for the style icon. “I just needed a case for protection and to carry it (the iPod) around,” she said. “Since there was none available, the easiest and fastest way to solve that situation was to design it.” According to Jobs, the iPod has now spawned more than 250 accessories made by different companies all over the world.
Now, though, there’s a new a new toy in the nursery, and this one’s even sweeter. Already the expectant mothers are clucking. Hello iPod Mini. This cute little baby has taken the United States by storm since its launch there in January this year. “It’s been so popular that we’ve had to delay the international launch,” says Jobs, referring to the fact that we won’t be able to buy one in the UK until July, at the earliest.
So what’s the secret of these micromusic players? Well, most importantly, for fashion-conscious girlies, unlike big brother iPod, the Mini comes in five mouth watering metallic colours. Silver, gold, blue, green or, my particular favourite, sugary pink. The cases are in “anodized aluminium” (whatever that is) to resist scratching from errant nail files and other handbag-based horrors. “iPod Minis have a sort of Sex and the City chic,” says the Macintosh consultant Richard Dyce. “It’s hardware you wouldn’t be surprised to find on sale in Harvey Nicks.”
Is size really important? You bet it is. Apple has realised that not everyone wants the original iPod’s vast memory. Why have a Ferrari and drive at 30mph, after all? With its 1,000 tune capacity, an iPod Mini holds an average person’s entire CD collection and, at a little more than 100g (3.5oz), is 76g (2.7oz) lighter than its bigger brother: a major consideration for gymmers and joggers. It’s also just one centimetre thick and smaller than your many mobile phones. iPod Minis are, if anything, proving even more irresistible than their elder, larger siblings. Sales in the States have contributed to Apple’s very healthy-looking balance sheet. Revenue expectations in the latest quarter have risen 29 per cent over the previous year. Although the Mini is not yet on sale here, there are hundreds of proud UK owners who have procured their toy via the internet. “When I saw the Mini, it looked perfect for me,” said Greg Knight, an information technology student in Northamptonshire. He had one delivered to his door via eBay for £200. “I knew I would probably get it cheaper and a hell of a lot earlier if I got one from eBay.” Even in the United States, according to the Kent-based computer supplier GreenBay Technology, iPod Minis “are like gold dust”.
Apple must be expecting great things when it finally gets enough Minis out of its factories to be able to launch them in Europe. Since the Mini’s launch, Apple shares have gone up and up. From just less than $22 (£12) at the end of last year, they are now (in mid-June) touching $30 on the Nasdaq listing. The spectacular success of the iPod means that it accounts for 14 per cent of Apple’s sales, according to the group’s latest quarterly results.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, Apple has a market- leading product — the iPod has a 52 per cent share of the global market for MP3 players — and the company looks determined to keep things that way.
Last month, the parent company span off the iPod into a separate unit. The business will continue to develop under the leadership of Jon Rubenstein, until recently Apple’s hardware engineering chief. The move has led some commentators to suggest that Apple may be in the throes of repositioning itself in the market. From being a computer company that also builds music players, it could become, they say, a purveyor of consumer lifestyle and electronics, an American version of Sony, if you will.
