Ingrid Ebeling, an analyst at JMP Securities, believes 500 million MP3 players will be sold before the market becomes saturated. Apple will easily sell 350 million of those, besting Sony’s record for Walkman sales.
“During Sony’s 15-year reign with the Walkman, the company sold over 350 million units, and we believe that Apple’s addressable market over time will exceed this number given the upgrade and replaceable nature of iPods as well as the overriding trend of consumers’ increasing use of digital media,” she wrote. “The net takeaway is that this is a product category that is far from saturated, and we believe well over 500 million units will be sold before the product category hits maturation.”
Apple has long had Sony’s benchmark in sight. Last year, Jon Rubenstein, the now-retired head of Apple hardware who oversaw development of the iPod, told me that he was pretty confident Apple would beat Sony’s 350 million record.
2 responses to “Analyst: Apple To Beat Sony’s Walkman Record, Will Sell At Least 350 Million iPods”
Nice, I guess this makes some sense, since there’s a couple of iPods in this house, but I personally have never owned an actual Sony Walkman – my wife had 2 though.