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Apple takes a bit out of iPod price |
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Written by David Pakman
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Wednesday, 08 February 2006 |
APPLE is cutting the price of its cheapest iPod to fend off growing competition from other makes of digital music players.
Its 512-megabyte iPod Shuffle - which can hold up to 120 fourminute songs - is being reduced from GBP69 to GBP49.
The firm is also cutting the price of its one-gigabyte Shuffle from GBP99 to GBP69. The reductions mean the price of these versions of the portable MP3 player - which were launched in January last year - has fallen by around 30 per cent. Details of the price cuts came as Apple announced it is launching another iPod model - the one-gigabyte Nano. The new device is capable of holding up to 240 songs or 15,000 photos.
Greg Joswiak, vice-president of worldwide iPod product marketing, said: 'By making it even more affordable, we want to continue to grow and enlarge the market.
'The iPod is the world's most popular digital music player with over 40million sold, and now even more music lovers can experience the unrivalled combination of iPod and iTunes.' The price cuts raise questions about whether Apple's profit margins will suffer.
But technology research analyst Shaw Wu said: 'The price of components has come down more than 70 per cent, especially flash memory for the Shuffle.
'And the price of the Shuffle hadn't changed, so they were making a ton of profit off the Shuffle.
'So they're passing some of those savings on.'
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