Flaw in Apple's iPod nano
2005-09-29 08:01
San Francisco - In an embarrassing public relations glitch, Apple computer on Wednesday admitted a flaw in its new iPod nano music players, saying that a small number of units had screens that could easily crack.
The announcement sent shares of the company down by some five percent at one point on Wednesday when they touched 50.70 from 53.44.
The development came just two weeks after the company released the new music players, which it hopes will dominate the music player market in the upcoming holiday season.
"This is a real but minor issue that involved a vendor quality problem in a small number of units," said Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr.
"This has affected less than one-tenth of one percent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped. And it's not a design issue."
While the company admitted that a single production batch had the faulty screens, it dismissed customer complaints that all have screens that scratch easily and advised users to buy a protective cover for their music players.
Apple released the iPod nano on September 7. The music player uses flash memory and can hold up to 1 000 songs in its four-gigabyte version.
The company sees the nano as a replacement for its bestselling iPod mini, which uses a hard-disk drive for storing music and data. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA