First ‘Serious, Deep-Pocketed Competitor’?

I saw this article about Apple and iPod sales by Jefferson Graham in USAToday last week while waiting to get on a plane for C4, but couldn’t find a link to it on USAToday’s web site. This is a reprint in The Fort Collins Coloradan. This line caught my eye:

The company has a 70 percent market share of digital music devices. Next month, it gets its first serious, deep-pocketed competitor when rival Microsoft launches its music player, the Zune.

So, Sony: Not deep-pocketed? Not serious about portable music players? Dell? Philips?

The sad part is that if, say, the Zune winds up being a complete dud, a year from now these same jackasses will be calling something else the “first serious competitor” to the iPod. The truth is that Apple has already successfully beaten several “serious, deep-pocketed” rivals. This sort of thing is just another variation on the “just wait and see, the ‘real’ companies will teach Apple a lesson just like they did with the Macintosh” theme.

★ Thursday, 26 October 2006