Toshiba To Supply Apple With Flash Memory?

if they get the memory next year, how soon before they can start selling the flashPods

According to one source, as early as February.

Why are they doing this?

Won't this kill iPod sales?

ok, so what does this do for us? We get flash ipods and Apple increases their player market share.. great, so? I know I bash the ipod all the time, but seriously, where does this get us?

Is the ipod $ going into R&D for useful things? Chip dev? Hardware? Software? Or does it just go to "profit" I know Apple spends a great deal, proportionally, on R&D, but is the ipod fuling that? Would be nice to think so.

ok, so what does this do for us? We get flash ipods and Apple increases their player market share.. great, so? I know I bash the ipod all the time, but seriously, where does this get us?

Is the ipod $ going into R&D for useful things? Chip dev? Hardware? Software? Or does it just go to "profit" I know Apple spends a great deal, proportionally, on R&D, but is the ipod fuling that? Would be nice to think so.

the article explains why:

The market for flash memory music players is five times as big as the hard-drive market by unit sales and double its size by revenue

I bet Steve is gonna blow his cap again like he did a few months ago with the 60GB drives.

Apple + Toshiba = BAD

ok, so what does this do for us? We get flash ipods and Apple increases their player market share.. great, so? I know I bash the ipod all the time, but seriously, where does this get us?

Is the ipod $ going into R&D for useful things? Chip dev? Hardware? Software? Or does it just go to "profit" I know Apple spends a great deal, proportionally, on R&D, but is the ipod fuling that? Would be nice to think so.

Apple's stock is 60+ dollars "because" of the promise of the iPod. Apple's market capitalization is over double it from just 18 months ago. It's hard to think of an area of Apple that "isn't" affected positively by the success of the iPod.

It should mean a better chance of aquiring companies to move Apple into areas where they can affect marketshare change. There is very little downside to the iPod success. My girlfriend...who owns a gateway computer has an iPod mini. Where else was Apple going to get her money? All the Chip, HW and SW R&D in the world concerning Macs wasn't going to mean squat.

Increasing mp3 player market share increases the halo effect of Apple Computer and hopefully gets more people to buy macs.

Yeah, no, I get that.. I get the ipod, and I've owned 4 of them.. It plays music and that's great, but I depend on their platform to make my living, so the ipod, directly, doesn't help that. I'm glad they've got mucho market share, but my thing is really a fear that they're putting all their eggs in the ipod basket., and not getting chickens out of the deal.. if you get my mangled metaphor.

I'd hope that Apple's mikling the hell out of the ipod phenom to dump most of it back into Steve's Mac, making deals like the rumored one with IBM,a nd getting windoze users to use more mac software as it creeps into their platform.

The ipod's just a music player now, not a productivity tool. When I can check my email on it, then I'll quit my bitching. That's a promise!

the article explains why:

I bet Steve is gonna blow his cap again like he did a few months ago with the 60GB drives.

Apple + Toshiba = BAD

I don't think Apple or Steve J, has a choice, I mean Toshiba makes the HDD for they iPod and next the flashPod.

Besides the only reason Apple didn't say anything is because they WERE INDEED going to use the 60 GIG HDD only in a Photo iPod, nothing more.

Unless Apple is making every part of of they products I see no reason why they have to be up in a fluster.