Niche Player

23 May 2006

Apple and Nike have launched today Nike+iPod

Firstly, no surprise that the iPod interface and features are spot on – the reason the iPod’s successful is due to Apple’s interface design skill after all. I’m sure this will be a hit with it’s target market.

But how big is that market?

To use this solution you have to have an iPod nano (not shuffle or a normal iPod), the Nike+iPod kit, the right sort of brand new Nike shoe and an internet connection. That’s not going to be a huge amount of people, is it?

What Apple seem to be doing now – and it’s a fairly valid strategy, I think – is trying to dominate every niche they can find. They’ve already tied up the main market – they’ve got something like 80% market share of mp3 players in the US – so they can afford to go after much smaller sub-markets, that they might not fulfil already. If Apple can wrap up these markets as well – witness there moves into getting iPods in use in colleges as well – then it really shores up the rest of the business.

However, one thing Apple seems to be going backwards with is web site design. If you go take a look at the Nike+iPod home page linked to above, we’ll both agree that it looks nice. In fact, other then the legacy table-based top navigation the code isn’t bad.

They’ve made two fatal errors: Firstly, it doesn’t fit on 800×600 (I guess they want us to all buy 30” displays…). Secondly, they’re using a 635kb png image as the main image. I guess we’re all on broadband too…

From: Articles

23 May 2006