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:
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS