Nano, video iPod both likely holiday winners

The San Jose Mercury News writes that Apple has the gadget-buying gift scene covered this holiday season with both the iPod nano and the video iPod.

Ben Bajarin at Creative Strategies noted brisk sales of the video iPod indicate a growing market for digital video, "but not necessarily the mass appeal of the iPod video." He said, "That's not people buying them to play them on video iPods because there aren't a million video iPods out there. It's not one of those products that will jump off the shelves. The nano is clearly the big seller now."

Shaw Wu at American Technology Research reported the iPod video "is doing very well. It's doing better than expected." In a recent investor's note, Wu wrote the video iPod is "surprisingly outselling even the very popular iPod nano.''

Wu estimated that for the quarter ending in December, "Apple will sell 9.4 million iPods, 5 million iPod nano models and 3 million iPod video versions."

Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said "Apple has done a great job of refreshing and segmenting the product line. You wonder what they are doing in Cupertino right now."