Lower-cost Mini-iPod Rumoured

Rumours, even covered by Reuters, are growing about a new, lower cost addition to the super successful Apple iPod range. Thoughts are that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce the so-called “Mini iPod” during his keynote speech at Macworld Expo on 6 January.

Pundits are guessing that they will have a capacity of between 2 and 4Gb and will cost from $100, and are designed to take on the lower-end MP3 players from Creative and Rio.

Most speculators think that the players 400-500 song storage will be based on Flash-memory, but we suspect that could contain tiny 1-inch mini-hard drives, or microdrives. Hitachi have already announced their intention to bring out 4Gb drives by the end of 2003 which uses their fantastically named, patented “Pixie Dust” media technology.

Reuters story