AfterDawn: News

Apple drops price on Shuffle and shows off new model

Apple has announced that they have dropped the price of their popular iPod Shuffle model after growth drastically slowed for the last quarter.

The 1GB 2nd Generation Shuffle will now cost a reasonable $49 USD. The company also introduced a 2GB version that will cost $69 USD.



A company statement showed that the player saw slowed growth to 5 percent last quarter, compared to 15 percent for the year and a half preceding it.

"This makes the Shuffle more competitive in terms of a price-capacity ratio," NPD Group's Ross Rubin said in an interview from New York. "While Apple had a good holiday season, the market has been slowing down somewhat."

To date Apple has sold over 140 million iPods, including Shuffles, "classic" iPods, and the new Touch model.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 Feb 2008 14:48

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• 12 comments

• tucker001

  cool

  19.2.2008 15:29 #1

• sandeep14

  will they reduce the price for the shuffle in the UK aswell?

  19.2.2008 17:39 #2

• snowlock

  i've been told that the shuffle only plays in shuffle. also, it's an ipod, so it is inherently absent of many of the better features of an mp3 player. even the best buy store brand 1gb player has a screen.
  
  not worth a dime, much less $50. get a real media player, buy a sandisk or creative.

  19.2.2008 17:56 #3

• chaos_zzz

  i think the shuffle is the lamest product on the market
  
  comen on lcd everywhere, ppl catching up with HD and a 70$ dollar product cannot even have a led lighted screen....

  19.2.2008 20:34 #4

• milkyoreo

  Originally posted by snowlock: i've been told that the shuffle only plays in shuffle. also, it's an ipod, so it is inherently absent of many of the better features of an mp3 player. even the best buy store brand 1gb player has a screen.
  
  not worth a dime, much less $50. get a real media player, buy a sandisk or creative.No, you have it all wrong. The iPod Shuffle is meant to be used as a cheap, but quality iPod for times when you just want a few songs to listen to, you dont care what you want to listen to, its just a trip to school.... and it's small. For example, I want to buy this because I know it wont break right away because its not a cheap $20 MP3 player; I need one of these to store a small amount of songs so I can go on small trips listening on my iPod without wasting the battery of my iPod Nano. If your gonna get one of these and you like music, you gotta get another iPod, like the new nano

  19.2.2008 21:39 #5

• snowlock

  Originally posted by milkyoreo: Originally posted by snowlock: i've been told that the shuffle only plays in shuffle. also, it's an ipod, so it is inherently absent of many of the better features of an mp3 player. even the best buy store brand 1gb player has a screen.
  
  not worth a dime, much less $50. get a real media player, buy a sandisk or creative.No, you have it all wrong. The iPod Shuffle is meant to be used as a cheap, but quality iPod for times when you just want a few songs to listen to, you dont care what you want to listen to, its just a trip to school.... and it's small. For example, I want to buy this because I know it wont break right away because its not a cheap $20 MP3 player; I need one of these to store a small amount of songs so I can go on small trips listening on my iPod without wasting the battery of my iPod Nano. If your gonna get one of these and you like music, you gotta get another iPod, like the new nanoso the solution is obviously to buy more than one ipod, rather than making the informed decision on the initial purchase. i know i mentioned best buy store brand, but that was more of an afterthought compared to where i mentioned other brand names. there's also samsung, or i'd even go with a sony over an ipod. all these major brands already have 1gb players for ~$50 with screens.
  
  
  you can get a 4gb sansa for $90-120, depending on where you go. it does everything the nano does, plus it has two important features that NO ipods have: mass storage compatibility, sd card expansion slot.
  
  that means not only is it quicker and easier to load up (you can load it with a ps3 or x360) but if you decide you want more space, you can buy an sd card. panasonic already started manufacturing 32gb sd cards.
  
  i don't know of any players, besides ipods, that aren't mass storage compatible; they try so hard to push itunes that they've forgotten not everyone even owns a pc. you also can't find a flash-based-player recently created by any of the other top media player manufacturers without an expansion slot.
  
  ipods are all form, no function. the only reasons to buy them over other brands are because everyone else has one or you want it as a fashion accessory.

  19.2.2008 21:57 #6

• 905drager

  Last Fall I was in the market for a small MP3 player and did a lot of comparison shopping. The style of the iPod Shuffle had it as one of my first options, but as soon as I saw the other players out there, it plunged to the bottom of the list. As some of the other posters mentioned, no mass storage, no radio, and no screen. I got all of these features on the Creative Zen Stone 2GB and it was $10 cheaper than the Shuffle. I don't mind the Nano (my sis has one) and regular iPods, but to me the Shuffle is worthless.

  20.2.2008 00:45 #7

• jetyi83

  all ipods are lame. the touchscreen one is cool ill give it that, but at that price and with that limited memory, its also a piece o crap.
  
  people will realize that apple is only successful because of their marketing (similar to Bose). Relative to competition, their units have elegance when it comes to looks but they have little to no substance. They lack expansion ports, are way too format specific, and they charge up the ass.
  
  personally i hat3e apple, and i can wait for competition to make things better.

  20.2.2008 01:11 #8

• dragnandy

  Originally posted by jetyi83: all ipods are lame. the touchscreen one is cool ill give it that, but at that price and with that limited memory, its also a piece o crap.
  
  people will realize that apple is only successful because of their marketing (similar to Bose). Relative to competition, their units have elegance when it comes to looks but they have little to no substance. They lack expansion ports, are way too format specific, and they charge up the ass.
  
  personally i hat3e apple, and i can wait for competition to make things better.
  completely agree.
  
  http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/...pod-shuffle.php

  20.2.2008 01:34 #9

• BootMe

  @ Snowlock
  
  I picked up my iPod in June 2003. It's the 3rd Generation one.
  It's never broke on me, the battery is still going strong. I've never experienced problems with it.
  
  No it doesn't have a touch screen, and no, it doesn't have a colour screen with photo's or video.
  
  I use it primarily to play music. It's 15Gb, and it cost £180 (approx $350 USD) brand new.
  
  I also use it to store some of my work files. I use these files at University, just plug in my iPod, and access it as a hard drive. How's that for a mass storage device?

  22.2.2008 06:46 #10

• snowlock

  to clarify what i meant by mass storage compatible:
  
  i have a friend who has an upstage phone, but no computer to load it with. his former roomate's computer was his primary source to rip cd's and load them onto his mp3 player phone. he uses mine sometimes, but that's still not his own hardware at his own residence.
  
  last week he bought a ps3, and was delighted to find that he could both rip cd's with his new console and load the music onto his phone. simply plug the phone into the usb port and switch to mass storage mode.
  
  you can't use an xbox360 or a ps3 to load an ipod, because they require software programs (usually the proprietary itunes) to load files onto the player.

  22.2.2008 23:59 #11

• borhan9

  Always good to here about reduced prices.

  9.4.2008 18:02 #12