Apple i-pod and Analysts

Make a note of this number for future reference. Analyst Charles Wolf (Needham & Co.) predicts Apple will sell 13.3 million iPods in 2005, with that figure jumping to 23.5 million in 2006. That’s a lot of white headphone-toting individuals waiting to happen!

One of Wolf’s more interesting predictions is the expectation that 100 million Windows users will be iPod owners by 2008. He thinks the iPod trend will generate a critical mass that could result in a surge in Mac sales, even if only a nominal fraction of the Windows-iPod convert.

I think he is over ambitious. It depends whether Apple continues with the software innovation, not so much the player itself. i-tunes at the moment is rather biased towards English language repertoire. I think the success will continue along these lines when foreign language music databases are coupled to i-tunes and you can get this stuff onto your i-pod too. It has to be -act global, think local.