Prince McleanIn a research note sent to clients today, Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich said his firm has been testing Apple's new iPod shuffle over the last week and believes it will be met by strong demand, likely exceeding the 0.5-1.0 million units most firms have modeled the company to sell during the quarter.
In testing the iPod shuffle, Merrill Lynch notes that one area of concern has been the download speeds. "Our tests show the key is to use AAC compression in combination with either USB 2.0 or Firewire 400. In typical usage, iPod shuffle download times should run 6 minutes (USB 2.0) to 18 minutes (USB 1.1). The worst case iPod shuffle scenario (using AIFF over USB 1.1) ran over 200 minutes on a low-end machine due to conversion time but only 19 minutes on a high-end machine."
From its experiences with the shuffle, the firm suggests the player will see strong demand from novices and new-to-iPod users, while existing iPod owners may prefer the larger capacity and display of existing iPods. "New-to-iPod users tell us the price points ($99 and $149) and ease of use are attractive," the firm said.
Merrill Lynch reiterated its 'Buy' rating on AAPL with a price objective of $85 per share, noting that Apple's net cash per share represents one-quarter of the company's market cap.
The firm cites poor execution, an absence of compelling new products, lack of PC share gain, and increased iPod competition as some of the risks associated with investing in the iPod maker.
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24 Comments
I suspect most users would be using AAC.
18 Minutes over USB 1.0 might sound a little slow, but
remember you'll need to leave the iPod Shuffle connected longer than that to charge the battery.
I doubt any user would be bothered by this transfer time.
I'm confused by the statement about transferring an AIFF file to an iPod shuffle.
According to Apple's support site:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300464
AIFF is not a supported format on an iPod shuffle. If that's true, what is the ML analysts doing?
->Paul
I'm confused by the statement about transferring an AIFF file to an iPod shuffle.
According to Apple's support site:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300464
AIFF is not a supported format on an iPod shuffle. If that's true, what is the ML analysts doing?
->Paul
And surely 512Mb / 1Gb of music is going to transfer in the same time regardless of the format??
should be, as long as it ends up being the same size file.
Whoa whoa whoa...
Anyone read the last paragraph in the article?
An absense of compelling new products???
You're right, we should just turn our heads and look at the compelling pieces of crap being put out by Dell, HP, Gateway... geez.
iMac G5 not compelling?
entire iPod lineup?
Their incredible software?