Music lovers and high-tech geeks yesterday sweated in the scorching sun to snap up their long-awaited iPod minis as Apple Computer Inc offered the first of the tiny music players available in this country -- all 100 of them.
"All 100 units sold out in half an hour," an Apple Taiwan public relations official said yesterday. "We are planning to ship more to Tai-wan, hopefully as soon as possible."
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The iPod mini is the world's smallest portable music player. It has a 4 gigabyte(GB)-capacity, weighs just 103g and can hold up to 1,000 CD-quality songs.
"It's an ideal combination of ultra-portable design, style, song capacity, ease-of-use and audio performance," Yeo Eng Yiong (
"We believe the product will sell like hot cakes in this market? it's not merely a music player, but a fashion statement," Yeo said.
The iPod mini was announced in January and went on the market in the US in February.
Yeo said the mini has quickly sold out everywhere because of overwhelming demand.
He refused to reveal exact sales numbers, saying only that as of June, Apple had sold over 2 million units of the iPod series since the portable player was launched in October 2001.
While local consumers prefer the lower-priced flash-based MP3 players, which have a smaller capacity, Yeo said the iPod mini was aimed at high-end users who look for better quality and are willing to pay a bit more.
He said the iPod mini, priced at NT$8,900, could also attract people who like the iPod but turned off by its price. The iPod sells for more than NT$10,000.
IPod owner George Lien (連智奇) said the iPod series outperforms other players in the market in terms of outlook, interface and functions.
"I think the mini version will be a hit," he said.
For example, users need not input song titles one by one when uploading music files from CDs, while other players require users to carry out the procedure on a computer, Lien said.
IPod user Hong Shou-ming (
Hong said although the battery life of iPod is billed at eight hours, the actual charge is about five and a half hours and the battery dies after it has been used for a year.
Targeting the iPod's battery limitations, mobile audio maker Rio Carbon is set to take on the mini with a device that weighs less, and offers a 5GB-capacity and has a 20-hour battery.
Rio Carbon's player will be available later this month and will be priced the same as the mini.
Yeo said Apple plans to launch its iTunes Music Store in this country and other Asian markets, but hasn't set a timetable because of copyright concerns.
Taiwan's MP3 music market is dominated by file-sharing Web sites such as kuro.com.tw (
Both sites have been sued by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Meanwhile, legal distributors such as iBIZ Entertainment Technology Corp (
Also see story:
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS