iBlog

20 Million iPods this quarter?!?

Yesterday in the Blackfriar’s Marketing blog Carl Howe discussed what he thought Microsoft’s reasoning was behind paying Universal Music $1 per Zune sold.

“While this sounds like a simple “we wanted to get a major music label on board deal”, it’s really an attempt to poison next year’s licensing contract renewal between Universal and Apple. After all, Microsoft is unlikely to sell more than two million Zunes in the next six months to a year, so this costs them little. But I estimate that Apple will sell nearly 20 million iPods just this quarter (more about that tomorrow), and hundreds of millions of songs as well. And if Apple has to forfeit a dollar of every $79 iPod shuffle sale to Universal (and presumably to Sony, Warner, and EMI as well), well, that’s a nice way to make Apple pay for Microsoft entering this market.”

The Macalope concurred, but John Gruber, over at Daring Fireball, has another idea, that Microsoft had no choice in the matter. If they wanted to sell music from Universal, they had to agree to this $1 fee on every Zune sold.

Of course what interested me was Howe’s assertion that Apple would be selling ten times as many units in this quarter compared to what Microsoft might expect over the next 6 months to a year. He coyly asked us to wait until tomorrow for more on that.

Well, it’s “tomorrow” and Carl Howe has given us his reasoning for why he believes Apple will sell some 20 million iPods in this Christmas quarter, and bring in a total of $7 billion in revenue.

Crazy…