iPod Tracker : iPod News

Apple announced that it sold more than one million videos in less than 20 days following the announcement of video downloads on the 31st of October. Pixar have since announced that they have sold 125,000 shorts through the iTunes Music Store in under a month.

New information suggests that the chart-topping series “Lost” is outselling cult classic “Desperate Housewives” by a margin of 2 : 1, according to comments attributed to Bernard Gershon - SVP and GM of ABC News Digital Media Group.

The Motorola SLVR L7 phone with integrated iTunes seems to be available to buy through Vodafone in the UK. The SLVR L7 is not available elsewhere as it seems to be exclusive to Vodafone at this time.

The Vodafone website describes the SLVR L7 as:

Ultra-thin, ultra-stylish and ultra-cool, and only available at Vodafone. With video messaging, high quality camera and MP3 player, order yours now before its too late.”

We’ve known for some time now that iTunes has been growing in popularity as it leads the revolution in digital music. The tight integration of iTunes and iPod seems to be working so well that sales have grown to the point that iTunes has cracked the top 10 list of US music resellers.

“The ongoing and growing popularity of Apple’s iTunes Music Store now positions the company as a leading music retailer, and continues to legitimize legal digital music retailing. With the growing interest in digital music, forecasts of more iPod demand this holiday, plus the stocking-stuffer appeal of iTunes gift cards, we can expect Apple to increase its share even more by year’s end.” said Russ Crupnick - a music and movies industry analyst for The NPD Group.

The top 10 list of US music resellers as of the 22nd of November look like this:

1. Wal-Mart
2. Best Buy
3. Target
4. Amazon.com
5. FYE
6. Circuit City
7. iTunes
8. Tower Records
9. Sam Goody
10. Borders

Apple have announced a long-term deal with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to supply NAND flash memory until 2010. As part of the deal Apple will prepay $1.25 billion for flash memory components over the next 3 months.

“We want to be able to produce as many of our wildly popular iPods as the market demands,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

TiVo will support both the iPod and Sony PSP, allowing users to transfer a recorded television program to an Apple iPod (video capable) or Sony’s PSP. According to an official press release the feature will start testing inside the nest few weeks. Full availability to TiVo Series2 subscribers is expected as early as the 1st quarter of 2006.

The New York Times (via MacRumors) reports that there will be a one-time fee to users to enable this feature - intended to cover the licensing fee for MPEG-4 encoded video files. It is reported that these files will be digitally watermarked to put users off sharing through P2P networks.

Apple have announced that they have a 60% marketshare in the Japanese portable digital music player sector. Apple stated that the iPod is ahead of it’s closest rival by a “wide margin”, with the introduction of the iPod nano boosting it’s share noticeably since being introduced in September.

The iTunes Music Store is also doing well, assuming top position as the most popular online music download store in Japan. However, Apple did not state where the statistics forming the basis of this claim were sourced.

It has been a while since the iPod shuffle has seen an update with all the attention focussing on the new iPod nano and revised 5th generation iPod. Sales of the iPod shuffle have reportedly slowed, prompting Apple’s iPod division to ready a new version of the bargain iPod.

LoopRumors.com reports that while the new iPod shuffle will be slightly smaller it will also come in both white and black to match the iPod nano and iPod. Their sources are reporting availability “as early as January”.

Apple are apparently sourcing extra NAND flash memory from Hynix:

In order to fulfill strong iPod related demand, Apple has started asking Hynix Semiconductor to offer quotations for low-density NAND flash, amid a significant upcoming capacity ramp at the South Korea-based memory maker, says research firm InSpectrum. In line with the increased output, contract prices for November for low-density flash have started to decline, InSpectrum noted.

Sales must be going well in the run up to the Christmas sales rush.

We’ve been getting reports that iTunes 6.0.1 suffers from one minor (but inconvenient) issue that affects fast forwarding and rewinding a track when minimized.

This issue is super-annoying and forces you to enlarge the window so that you can go forward or back, which wastes time.

Apple please fix it!

MobilityToday have just posted that Apple now seem to be shipping new iPod Nano’s with a case. It is assumed that this is in response to a suit filed against Apple because the iPod Nano was reportedly scratching too easily.