Rumours are abound the Apple Mac sites on the internet that Apple are about to announce a sub $100 iPod to tackle growing demands for the smaller MP3 players from companies such as Creative and Rio.

The announcement, reportedly to be made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in January, is suppose to herald a new iPod of around the 2 - 4Gb marker. This would amount to roughly 400 - 800 songs.

In contrast Creative currently offer its Muvo NX, a 256Mb solid state MP3 player, for just over £100 and its 1.5Gb offering at £180. This makes the rumours for a sub $100 (£60) highly improbable, but not completely unfounded as sources across the web such as news agency Reuters, analyst Rob Enderle and a host of other reputable sites have picked up on the story.

Apple has long been used to blazing the trail for the MP3 player market. Apple reportedly shipped over 1.3million units of its mp3 player by October 2003 with BBC online suggesting it was the must have gadget this Christmas.

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