i Mac was used as more of a decorative piece of instrument by most of them or a matter of prestige and not much of an entertainment device. i Mac when launched did not have a CD burner installed when compared to other competitors. Steve jobs anticipated trouble .It had already started impacting the sales of i Mac.
He knew that his i Macs were not selling!!!
Apple had shown interest in video players and processes for file transfer for incorporating in the i Mac.
this is how they went about developing iTunes.
Sony with the help of its R&D team had come up with a lithium ion battery which was very small in size. Unfortunately there were no vendors requiring it .
on the other hand Toshiba had come up with a HDD, which was also small in size.
with the use of these two trump cards Steve Jobs and team created something small yet distinct music player which was better than all the existing music players in terms of storage space and battery life.
Who would opt for a Sony Walkman now ? when you have a player which can store around 1000 songs which can play for a month once charged.
The recording companies were facing an issue of stealing of albums from sites like Napster and piracy was becoming an issue.
The recording companies came as guardian angels. Steve jobs called all of the recording companies for a meet, one of which was Warner music group (WMG).
Steve proposed a deal to these recording companies saying he will curb piracy and stealing of songs by introducing the iPod. Jobs beautifully managed to negotiate with the music companies by giving a classical justification.
He convinced them that his new music player is so much better than the others and it will rely on iTunes for transfer of songs. The albums have to be converted and compressed to make them compatible to be played and stored in this small device.
The recording studios felt they also had an advantage. Their songs which were sold in the form of albums could now be downloaded individually. While purchasing albums they had no choice on their favorite songs. This could also have a negative impact on album sales, because by selling individual songs, the relatively bad songs in the albums will not be downloaded. so, jobs made a deal with the music companies to sell individual songs at a premium price, say 99 cents or 1$.
There was no much scope for loss for these companies because iTunes was only compatible with the i Macs and the i Macs sales were not shooting up because they lacked CD burners. so there were only about a million of those in the market, not posing much of threat for the music companies. The music companies found this proposal very appealing and hence all of them signed an agreement .
i Mac sales shot up !!
this is how i Pod saved its ancestor i Mac
I don't think i will have to remind you what happened after the launch of iPod.
This device changed the way music was consumed.
This device.................. let the stats below speak for me
________________________________________By Ganesh Kamath ~ @ganzooga
