Christmas stockings attract a Touch or two
An Apple under every tree
Apple's iPod Touch was the Christmas gift of choice this year, if an apparent 1000 per cent jump in application sales in anything to judge by.
On December 25 sales of applications to iPod-touting customers jumped by one thousand per cent, and the total figures for December are already 51 per cent up on November when the iPhone is included.
The figures come from Flurry Analytics, a company that provides a tiny client developer's drop into applications in exchange for access to raw data. This lets the rest of us see how popular the iTunes store was on Christmas Day as millions of teenagers unwrapped their iPod Touch players and rushed to download farting applications before their peers.
MobileCrunch quotes Flurry marketing veep Peter Farago, who notes that iPod Touch owners are now downloading more applications than iPhone owners. He suggests this can be attributed to the teen demographic that got an iPod Touch from Santa Claus.
Just before Christmas Flurry announced it is to merge with Pinch Media, a competitor doing much the same thing. The combined entity reckons it will have reporting clients installed on more than 80 per cent of iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android devices, giving the company almost as much information as Apple itself.
A straw poll at El Reg towers reflects the popularity of Apple's MP3 player as a Christmas gift. Several nephews and nieces got a Touch this year, along with more-elderly relatives, as the device becomes entirely mainstream.
Millions of applications does not necessarily translate into millions of dollars - many of those iPod Touch players will be clenched in hands too young to own a credit card, and the vast majority of applications downloaded will be freebies. But it indicates that Apple sold an awful lot of hardware this Christmas and that's what Cupertino really cares about. ®
COMMENTS
Most people are getting it only now
You may not believe it but my impression with "normal" people is that almost everyone knows about the iPhone but hardly anyone knows about the iPod touch being very much the same thing just with no phone (and no monthly costs). I had to explain this uncounted times and everyone got extremely curious then. They usually think "iPod" and then "music" and then "well, got a player already". When you show them that you can browse the web and check your email and play games and read books on the thing, you practically see gears starting to move in their heads and hear things clicking into place.
Not pointless to me
Why would a wi-fi enabled music player be pointless? It actually makes it easier to use to transfer things like a music file. Now as far as the games and watching video, I don't do that with music players, I plug them into my car audio system and can enjoy over a weeks worth of music on a single device.
I have 6 portable music players, I had a Digital River mp3 player before there were iPods. But the competing user interfaces are crap when compared to Apple even on a Windows box. The players from ALL brands I owned have worked very well. However, I just replaced my 1st generation 10GB iPod with a 5th generation iPod Nano with 16GB. The Apple device provides the easiest way for me to do what I want, it is far more intuitive and easier to use than WMP with Sansa, Sony or Zune. I rip most of my music from the thousands of CDs I purchased in the past 20 years, so I in 8 years I spent less than $200 at the iTunes store. Some people prefer single purpose devices, other like multi-purpose, with Apple you can have either.
Happy New Year!
Dunno
He isnt that technical. He plonked it in my hand and said "its broken, Fix it Fix it Fix it"
Needless to say, i couldnt fix it, it was knackered.
He mentioned something about it needing an update, so maybe that failed. My iphone never had any issue and the wifey's itouch also worked fine, but then i set both up from scratch. they aint idiot proof.
All true...
but you have to be in WIFI range - not so with the iPhone.
That's one of the biggest attractions of the iPhone!
pointless device?
i find it a pointless device personally why not just suck it up and get an iphone or stick with a normal ipod
or better still buy some cheap chinese jobbie from a local computer fair
