Microsoft's portable...

[The Former DMiller]

As far as those numbers you found all i can say is wow. They make no sense though and they're coming from corporate which as we know in any case is always inflated regardless. But to go from 15 million to almost 50 million in ONE YEAR? When the reports say that around 20 million were manufactured through that year (most delivered to its fiscal end)?? So the ipods are all sold out now? How does that make sense? And how does the same time frame equal two different numbers that are vastly different? are those sales worldwide and sales through the website itself? But it says that in other countries the Creative Labs MP3 players are more dominate in the market, so that means the 50 million users are all American? 50 million Americans have ipods?? the HELL?

Not sure what numbers you are looking at lazy, but it looks like Apple has sold 42 million over the life of the iPod. Although I thought for sure that the iPod was released before 2003. I had an iPod for at least a year in college and I graduated in December of 2003.

I know a pretty good amount of people from all over the country either that I met on films or over the internet and I only know 2 of them to have an ipod, i simply cannot grasp how almost 50 million people have an ipod, that just doesn't make sense. Apple could not have manufactured AND SOLD that many ipods in the time span its been available and by the records you posted it says it grew it's production to nearly 3 times and was able to manufacture 20 million of them in one year (which I also dont buy, that's an insane amount, not even the Chinese motorcycle factories can pop that many out in a year and their houses are gargantuan) and it just seems like wishful thinking.

You know it is faulty logic to project what you see and believe it is true worldwide. You probably know more people than me, but almost everyone I know has an iPod while you only know of 2 people with one. Walk down the street of a major city one day and count the white earbud headphones you see. I did it one day in Chicago and counted 73 in half an hour.

Now this would all make sense if Apple is saying that over the entire span of the ipod, they have manufactured 50 million units (it's coming up on 3 years now since it was released, that's 20M from this year alone based on their records and 30M from the other two years) for a world-wide market but has encountered problems with breaking in to other countries because of the dominance of other brands (flash) and that in the United States the ipod has a user base of around 20 to 25 (possibly more) million people which would make more sense but is still hard to swallow.

42 million is how much they have sold for the life of the iPod, and from what I understand they really aren't too many countries where it doesn't dominate the market. I think Creative has a larger marketshare in Korea, but it seems like the iPod is popular in nearly every market. If it wasn't the iTunes music store would not be successful in countries outside the US since it is only compatible with the iPod.