Apple Inc sold 100 million iPod media players in the five-and-a-half years since chief executive officer Steve Jobs unveiled the device.
The sales make the iPod the fastest-selling music player in history, Cupertino, California-based Apple said on Monday in a statement. Jobs has introduced more than 10 models since October 2001, including the Mini, Nano, a video iPod and the Shuffle.
The tally means Apple likely sold about 11 million iPods in the second quarter, up from 8.53 million a year earlier. Analysts on average anticipated 11.1 million units, UBS AG analyst Benjamin Reitzes said, adding his own estimate had been for 12.2 million. Apple had sold more than 88.7 million through December, with a record 21 million players during the holidays.
Apple in January began offering its US$79 Shuffle in five colors to help boost post-holiday sales and will probably introduce new designs this year to spur demand, New York-based Reitzes said.
He raised his second-quarter profit estimate to US$0.63 from US$0.61 after predicting that lower memory prices and demand for Macintosh personal computers will buoy profit margins.
Sales of the iPod accounted for 48 percent of Apple's revenue in the holiday quarter. It is the best-selling music player in the US with a more than 70 percent share of the market, the NPD Group Inc in Port Washington, New York said.
"Without the iPod, the digital music age would have been defined by files and folders instead of songs and albums," musician John Mayer said in the statement. Singer Mary Blige and cyclist Lance Armstrong also offered their endorsements.
Meanwhile, SanDisk Corp and Yahoo Inc on Monday said they have teamed up to sell a digital music player that allows users to download songs wirelessly, a feature the iPod lacks.
Users of the Sansa Connect device, which costs US$249.99, can download unlimited music from Yahoo's Web site for a monthly fee, Milpitas, California-based SanDisk said. They also can listen to Web radio and store and view photos.
"This will allow us to gain market share in this fast-growing market," SanDisk chief executive Eli Harari said in an interview.
The company expects to win 30 percent to 35 percent of the music-player market over the next several years as wireless computer networks become more widespread, he said.
Apple's iPod dominates the market, with almost 75 percent of sales in January, compared with 8.9 percent for SanDisk, NPD Group Inc said. The iPod and its competitors generated US$6.1 billion in total US sales last year, NPD said.
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