Apple to stop making iPods?
Robert Cringely has an interesting take on Apple and its much loved iPod - believing the day is coming when Apple will stop making the iPod and will license it’s manufacturing out to others:
‘Apple’s own downward price pressure on portable media players gives us another element of the probable iPod strategy that hearkens back to my question of a few weeks ago whether iPod is the razor or the blade. Ultimately, what Apple wants to do is make its money through iTunes, where the profit margins are better in the long term and the system is easily scalable. It was necessary to create the iPod platform to make this happen. But downward price pressures will eventually hurt iPod profit margins and affect Apple’s stock price, so the trick is to know when to switch the business from being a mix of hardware and software to one that is software-only. That switch, which I believe to be inevitable, will happen shortly after Apple begins to license iPod clones….’
Read more at Jet Me to Work
found via engadget
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