The iPod Ecosystem

Was reading this article by the same name in the NYT this morning. Quite an eye-opener as regards to accessories seperately as a huge market.

When I bought my iRiver 320 last Jan I didn't have a desire to spruce it up with any accessories maybe because it wasn't cool enough or just for the fact it didn't have any in the market except cases and the ones it had were sold off and not easily available.

When I bought my video iPod this Jan, even before I had my hands on it, I had a docking pod, a neoprene case and an Altec Lansing iMPlus set of stereo speakers for it. Now that would be weird eh? Not really, specially if you check them out. And there are quite a few like me which make this accessory market worth close to $1 billion. Hmmm. Thats quite a lot spent on accessories. If their numbers are right, (they claim) consumers spent $1 for every $3 spent on an iPod. Let me do my own math now. I had spent 40 odd quid in London and Canadian$ 80 odd for my stuff, which roughly works out to this ratio (the iPod was for $400). There you go.

Another interesting part of this whole accessory thingy is that its not a captive Apple market. There are numerous players in the market which compete directly and sometimes not for the range of accessories. My only pain point is that Apple's accessories are so damn expensive. The one I'd be looking to add is the fm-remote thingy and thats a $50. So whoever said good things in life don't come cheap was quite right!