Sep
28
Briefly: Nano costs, Jens of Sweden bankruptcy, vPod, Archos AV700 review, ‘Screw Nano’ comment
- Unpeeling Apple’s Nano (your 2GB Nano costs $98.18; “Market research firm iSuppli set out to satisfy the curiosity by buying the $199 2-gigabyte version of the Nano and tearing it apart. The verdict? It costs Apple $90.18 in materials to build the unit and $8 to assemble it, leaving a profit margin before marketing and distribution costs of about 50%. [...] “Historically, Steve [Jobs] won’t accept anything less than 20% gross margin on any product,” says Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin.”) [via]
- Jens of Sweden files for bankruptcy (“competition from abroad, problems with defective players and miscalculated import duties” apparently were too much for the company, “but the founder, Jens Nylander, told reporters that he has no intention of getting out of the business. “It doesn’t matter how many times I go bankrupt. I’ll still continue to sell digital products,” [...] JOS will take over Jens of Sweden’s entire operation, financed by a parent company in Switzerland”)
- vPod is a nice, simple program for transferring music to your iPod from Windows (free software, now with support for the iPod shuffle too; I dig the simplistic approach)
- Warner Music Group releases band debut skipping the CD format (you can pick up The Sun’s music in vinyl!, DVD and through the big digital music stores)
- Review: Archos AV700 (they give it a 7/10, which is surprising considering its rather mediocre video capabilities; it’s more like a 5/10; 40GB, records too, 7-inch screen with a miserable 480×234 resolution, goes for ~£395) [via]
- Motorola: ‘Screw Nano’ Comment a Joke (Motorola claims his “Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?” comment was taken out of context, and you know what, seems to me they’re saying the truth; it just doesn’t make sense to bash a new business partner of yours)
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
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[...] iPod video dissected, costs about 150 bucks to make: The ugly job done by analysts Jeffries and company — the $299 30GB version is estimated to cost about $143.50 — by the way, iSuppli says $151. (For those keeping numbers, the $200 2GB Nano costs about $98 to make.) Old-timers PortalPlayer (CPU), Wolfson (audio chip), etc. are still here — there’s a separate video chip though, and it’s manufactured by Broadcom (”BUY! BUY!”). Side-fact: the 60GB model actually contains twice as much SDRAM – 64 Megabytes rather than 32 Megabytes. SDRAM typically serves as a buffer for audio and video clips, and additional memory can reduce the number of times an iPod’s hard drive is accessed, thereby further improving battery life. [...]
...added by HiFi Blog -- Review: iPod with video /// October 25th, 2005 at 02:49 AM