Spotty shortages abound for Apple Computer Inc."s wildly popular iPod digital music players amid Wall Street expectations for a doubling in sales of the devices in the holiday quarter, analysts said on Wednesday. "I was at an Apple store just yesterday and the place was packed with people looking at iPods and iPod accessories," said Susan Kevorkian, an analyst at IDC in San Mateo, California.
"There"s no question that iPods are an extremely hot item this holiday season." Some financial analysts have forecast that Apple will sell 4 million of the market-leading devices in the current quarter, double the number it sold in the previous period, when they accounted for 23 percent of the Cupertino, California-based company"s overall revenue.