Jupiter - New iPod Re-sets Bar

It must be a Nano lovefest at Jupiter. Analyst David Carr posts at the Jupiter Analyst Weblogs that Apple has hit a homerun and "just re-set the MP3 player agenda." He points out that:

2GB and 4GB is plenty - as we said with the Mini, most people still don't have more than 1,000 songs in their collections. The Mini outsells the Shuffle and the White models, folks.

Colleague Michael Gartenberg posts his first thoughts on the Nano after spending some quality time with the device. He doesn't go much into functionality because it worked just like an iPod with some new tweaks. For him the form factor took precedence.

He thinks it an almost an invisible device (like a watch or clothing) that "frees up space for other gadgets users can carry and (most people will carry more than one)." He notes that the "fact that it also now syncs to Outlook is important as well. That creates more device dependence and gives you more reason to carry it around all the time" for the contacts and calendaring features. Lastly on the reason for dropping the mini from the lineup, Gartenberg writes:

I had a chance to chat with Steve Jobs about the decision to drop the mini and go with the shuffle and I believe it’s a pretty wise move. With mini competitors like the Dell DJ and Creative Zen Micro, it was getting hard for the mini to stand out of the crowd. Apple could have done the expected and upped the capacity of the shuffle to 2gb and tweaked the mini but instead chose to take the road less traveled, to kill a successful product at the peak of success and create a brand new family of product. But making decisions like that is how you make all the difference.

Makes sense to me. Let's just hope Apple was able to clear its mini inventory at the peak of its success too. New product intros can just kill demand for older lines...