Apple’s iPod is a hit, but analysts’ belief that it commands 25 percent of the global market may be overblown, Alex Salkever writes in his latest “Byte of the Apple” column for Business Week Online. He says this is because “very little good data exists on international sales of consumer electronics.” “According to one of those chipmakers and to industry analysts, worldwide shipments of digital-music-player chips hit about 15 million last year,” Salkever writes. “An April, 2004, report from investment bank CIBC on this market estimated global sales of flash and hard-drive music players at 17 million. If that’s true, then the 1.5 million iPods sold in 2003 gives Apple 8 percent to 10 percent of the global market.”
