Apple: Europe ‘Not Doing Justice’ To iPod nano
11:08 am, October 21st, 2009, Ed Sutherland
Europe is “not doing justice to the nano,” Apple’s general manager and vice president for the region told a British newspaper Tuesday. The comment came as Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said “customers love the iPod nano.”
“We believe it [the market] is not doing justice to the [iPod] nano, where for £115 ($190) you’ve got 8GB plus a camera,” Pascal Cagni told the Guardian newspaper.
“Our job is to better carry the message. We need to express it better so that people get convinced of what we do,” Cagni said.
The reservations come amid a generally upbeat assessment of Apple’s success in Europe. Apple’s portables “display growth of 35 percent year-on-year” and the company has “immense success all over Europe” with its back-to-school campaign. In fact, Apple has “typically above 20-25 percent market share in each of the [European] countries,” according to Cagni.
Despite Apple’s comment about customers falling in love with the new iPod, sales of its line of MP3 players fell 8 percent, although the company reported a 100% jump in iPod touch sales. Sales of iPods typically surge during the September quarter. The updated iPod nano was released September 9, three weeks prior to the end of the quarter.
[Via 9to5Mac, Guardian and BetaNews]
Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article
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Pretty much everybody and their dog in the UK already has a mobile phone with a camera, so the nano camera has zero added value. The only thing Apple offers that is a replacement/step up for these users is the iPhone. The nano is a step down for these users.
Perhaps it’s a case of Apple not doing justice to the European market?
imajoebob, on October 21st, 2009 at 11:26 am
Ditto to that comment. Who is the Nano for? Few people carry both devices around with them anymore when the mobile phone does it all anyway at the same memory size.
Mark Rich, on October 21st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Ditto to both of the above comments.
I suppose this could also have something to do with the masses not being *that* enthusiastic about technology gadgets as in the US. There is still a cultural difference between the US and the older members of Europe. Not to speak about the newer members, where people care about the standards of living more than spending money on rather useless gadgets.
Brand awareness is certainly important in Europe as everywhere else. but it’ll take some time for gadgets to become so pivotal to the very definition of life/success/happiness that they hace become in the US so as to actually see people change their lives after each time Apple presents something new.
And good, that is.
FWIW, the Onion has put that in a scetch. It’s dead center:
http://www.theonion.com/content//node/93143
maelcum, on October 21st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I think a large majority of people do not upgrade hardware every year and this is the drop that Apple is seeing. I mean you barely buy a macbook for instance and its being upgraded. The same I guess is true for the Nano too. Too frequent upgrades don’t have the same value associations that say an upgrade every 2 years has. Further Apple doesn’t have a trade in option which would encourage me to keep upgrading.
Dax, on October 21st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
The “drop” in iPod sales is an accident of accounting. Combine iPod and iPhone sales and there’s an increase. Because of GAAP rules about the contract revenues, they have to split them up.
In the States, the iPod started taking root in 2003. But the smart phone barely existed back then. I moved to the UK in ‘03 and was stunned at the predominance of smart phones. I was “Mr Cool” because I had my trademark white buds hanging out of my ears, but I didn’t even know how to spell SMS. I might see 2 other people a day in Central London and on the Tube with an iPod, but EVERYBODY had a mobile. When I came back to the States in ‘05 the smart phone still didn’t match the UK in ‘03. The markets were upside down, so the integration of the technologies was also reversed.
It’s a rare swing-and-a-miss for Apple’s market intelligence.
imajoebob, on October 21st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I think the iPod Nano will sell more over the Xmas period, some of my work colleagues have commented that there children have put the Nano on their Xmas list’s.
Popa, on October 22nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm