Daniel Eran Dilger's take

"Lost in the Numbers. It’s hard to be too upset about Apple’s iPod sales. It sold 22,121,000 iPods, which while only five percent more units compared to the winter quarter last year, represented 17 percent higher revenues. That’s because Apple brought a more powerful and expensive iPod to market, the iPod Touch. Brisk sales of the higher end model bumped up revenues and profits and raised the average selling price of iPods in general. Apple enjoyed the highest growth rate in revenue for the iPod in a year.

Consumers enjoyed the best iPod ever. In addition to the new Touch, Apple also released the new video playing Nano, converting its product lineup into one than can play both music and video purchased from iTunes. More recently, they can also handle rented movies as well. Perhaps the company knows what its doing after all.

Another secret that seems to have slipped through the fingers of every analyst on the planet is that the iPhone is also an iPod. It’s essentially an iPod Touch with a camera and a mobile phone. Apple sold 2.3 million iPhones in the winter quarter, so if you add those into the iPod units, you arrive at 24.4 million iPods, which is what analysts were looking for, albeit in the wrong column of the report.

The other difference between the iPhone and the standard iPods is that the iPhone generates steady, subscription-accounted income as well as a share of mobile operator service fees. The nibbling cannibalization of iPod sales by the iPhone is kindest competition Apple could hope for."

Is Shaw Wu high?? Seriously. Nothing else explains such an ignorant, inane job of reporting.

Dear boris_cleto,

You beat me to that reference of roughly drafted. Apple just overhauled the entire ipod line this Fall, what do people expect in terms of upgrade?

This analyst is missing the bigger picture with the itunes rental and the iTouch/iPhone. The iTouch AND iPhone ARE ipods!!!

Add. Capacity.

While the displays and interfaces on iPhone & iPod touch are nice, they don't have enough space for entire song libraries with a few movies sprinkled in.

Still waiting on the cheap technology trend in the storage sector...

Apple should release a device that combines iPod functionality with a phone. They could call it an iPhone.

Yet again Shaw Wu misses by expectation on perceptive reporting by about 100%.

He does meet his expectations on somebody paid far too much to say the bloody obvious, indeed he exceeded that by 23%.

The iPod sales have been record breaking 22 million and if you add in the iPhone which is also an iPod it comes out to 24 million. So why does Apple have to rescue anything? I can't believe how STUPID people are when they look at these numbers.

You'd think these high-paid, economically-savvy individuals would have heard of this little thing called "Market saturation" during some point of their tenure...

How long has the iPod been around? How many units sold? At some point, there's less people to sell them to, they HAVE to understand this, right? I have my iPod, I don't need a new one right now. How many others are just like that anymore?

I'm sure a good percentage more than in 2002, that's for sure.

Word for the day, Mr. Wu: Market Saturation

160 Gig isn't big enough for your music library?!! Wow!

"Add. Capacity.

While the displays and interfaces on iPhone & iPod touch are nice, they don't have enough space for entire song libraries with a few movies sprinkled in. "

The Touch and iPhone are 4, 8 ,and 16 gig. Not 160G. So no, they are not big enough for a considerable music library or photo library, or video and movie content. I just broke down and got a 16gig Touch and will sell in an instant when a 32g comes out.