Jealous

CNET.com - Kill the iPod: "With all the attention the Apple iPod's been
getting lately, it looks like the inventor of the
Walkman is getting jealous. Twenty-five years
after Sony debuted its first music player, see how the portable audio pioneer is trying to win back your love."

I think I should start counting how many times Cnet's home page runs the headline "Kill the iPod" or "iPod Killers." They seem to be obsessed with ridding the world of Apple's music player. Probably, being the PC-centric site they are, they can't understand the idea of consumer electronics as fashion accessories. It doesn't quite enter their editorial consciousness that looks could outshine typical PC characteristics such as "cheap" and "inexpensive." And "doesn't cost as much."

With something like the iPod, where the market is not business but rather individuals, the strategy of a typical PC maker doesn't work. Believe it or not, people actually like having to pay more for certain items. It conveys the idea of the item being premium and thus more worth having. It's a marketing thing more than anything. Apple could obviously make plenty of money off each iPod sold even if it priced it more in the range of the similarly sized player from Dell, but it probably wouldn't be nearly so popular if cost so much less.

It's like Weber grills -- stores are actually forbidden to offer sale prices on Weber gas grills because it would reduce the value of the brand in the eyes of the consumer. I believe iPods cannot be discounted as well (except for when Apple offers them as a bonus for buying a Mac).

But anyway, I find it somewhat amusing now how many times Cnet has declared the iPod dead. Somehow, I don't think the new Walkman, which doesn't really look all that different from all the other iPod wannabes, will make any significant impact on the market. Sure, the Walkman brand was cool once -- but that was a couple decades and a couple media formats ago.