With an increase in assaults and robberies on teenagers for the technology that they carry, such as iPods, MP3 players and games consoles, a new survey has revealed a worrying trend. It seems that the average teenager has approximately £665 worth of kit about their person when they go out, including electronic items, watch and clothes.

This is possibly the reason that 40% of all parents include the things their children own on their household insurance. It’s a good thing too, because a quarter of all teenagers have lost possessions in the past 12 months due to theft or carelessness.

Insurance company Allianz conducted a survey of 3,000 parents in the current climate of teenage driven crimes. Even the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has warned against teenagers carrying expensive items with them when they go out, making them obvious targets for crime.

The survey showed that teenagers tend to leave the house in approximately £225 worth of clothing, including shoes, and often carry gadgets with them such as an iPod, a mobile phone or an MP3 player.

14% of teenagers also said that they carry games consoles with them when they leave the house, such as the PSP or the Nintendo DS.

Mark Bishop from Allianz stated:

Teenagers travelling alone are still particularly vulnerable to thieves and muggers.

Leaving the house wearing expensive jewellery and using an MP3 player might attract attention but not necessarily the sort a teenager is looking for. As always, it is important-to conceal items of value when out and about.

If you’ve wondered why the Nintendo Wii hasn’t had many traditional styled games released for it this year, it’s because the third party publishers just don’t understand the console. At least that’s according to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo’s US president.

I will be able to say our licensees ‘get it’ when their very best content is on our platform. And with very few exceptions today, that’s not the case.

He went on to criticise third party developers with the way they develop their games for the Nintendo Wii. He said that developers need to do more to their games that just alter the control system to fit in with the Wii’s unique controller.

EA Games has made a genuine effort to make games specific for the Wii, particularly with their new fitness title due out next year, but many third party publishers have simply released the same titles for the Wii that they have for the other consoles, with minimal tweaks.

Nintendo did suggest in the past that the lack of success with the Wii for third party publishers was very similar to the lack of success they had when the Nintendo DS was first released. They overcame that obstacle, but the Wii is proving more difficult.

You wouldn’t normally think of MP3 players as something that could be purchased with a grant to a school, but High Plain Elementary School in the USA is benefiting from a $3,000 grant for 12 MP3 players.

The MP3 players aren’t for students to listen to music and sit quietly in the corner though, they’re for aids to reading and speech for special needs students. Some students have even gone as far as recording raps with the MP3 players, and have posted them on the Internet.

Ten-year-old Ben Purten stated:

I never thought I’d do something like this in school.

The MP3 players aren’t just regular MP3 players, they’re designed for educational use and have been donated by Comcast. Each player comes with two headphone sockets, allowing two students to use them at the same time to listen to audio books.

The players also allow the students to record their own voices, enabling them to improve their speech.

Ten-year-old Andrew Soucy said the MP3 players were really helpful for him:

You can tell if it makes sense, whether you said something too fast or slow.

MP3 players aren’t just for entertainment!

With the current increase in thefts and muggings involving iPods, many teenagers are refusing to simply hand over their MP3 player devices to muggers, insisting they’ll fight to protect their shiny handheld music players.

Student Adam McDowell states he’d fight to protect his iPod. Standing at six-foot-two, the student is adamant that he wouldn’t just hand over his prized possession:

“I’d fight them back, or run. And yell, or something. I just don’t worry about it. I’m just tall, I guess.”

Adam has only had his iPod for three weeks and insists that the money he spent on it is the reason that he wouldn’t just give it up to someone wanting to steal it from him.

It has become a real problem of late with teenagers being targeted for their iPods. Teenagers are seen as easy targets because they can be intimidated by gangs and often carry expensive items such as iPods, MP3 players, games consoles and mobile phones about their person.

Child behavioural expert Gary Direnfeld explains the reason behind teenagers refusing to hand over their iPods.

“The iPod to the teenager is the baby to the mother. These kids are so invested in their music and in their playlists, it’s like they put their identity into their song selection. So you’re not just stealing a device, to them you’re stealing an identity.”

According to a new report by Global Industry Analysts, sales of MP3 players, such as the iPod and the Sony Walkman, will hit 100 million units by 2012. The reasons for the high projections include the rising levels of disposable income and an increasing usage of the internet.

Other reasons for the high sales projections are the lower price of MP3 players, the reduced size of the players and the many new features that they include, making people want to upgrade their existing players in favour of newer, better ones that can hold more music.

According to Global Industry Analysts, the USA market for MP3 players is the biggest in the world and is expected to be 14.5 million units this year. Following the USA is Asia-Pacific and Europe. Between the three markets they form 75% of the MP3 player market in the world.

All three markets are growing strongly, with Global Industry Analysts predicting the MP3 player market to top the 100 million mark by 2012.

Of course, Apple are expected to have the lion’s share of that market.

As iPod related robberies increase throughout the world, police in Canada have reacted successfully and arrested nine teenagers over a spate of iPod thefts. Five victims had been targeted in Toronto and had their iPods stolen recently.

Of the nine teenagers that have been arrested by police in the area, three of them are female, and they are aged between sixteen and eighteen years old. The teenagers have been charged with a total of eighty-one separate charges, with crimes ranging from robbery to assault and possession of stolen property.

All of the incidents happened last week from Friday to Saturday. In one attack, an eighteen-year-old male was beaten by the group of teenagers and had his cash, mobile and iPod stolen.

All of the robberies involved violence and the theft of iPods.

iPods are becoming increasingly popular for thieves due to their ease to sell on, and the fact that they retain their value. Despite police making these arrests, iPod users are advised to keep their MP3 players hidden at all times.

Mark Papermaster is the replacement for iPod creator Tony Fadell, who quit Apple last week. Fadell’s loss will be sorely felt by Apple as his vision was responsible for the creation of the iPod, the developments of the iPhone and the inception of iTunes, the music download website.

To replace Fadell, Apple brought in Papermaster from IBM. However IBM aren’t too happy about Papermaster jumping ship to work for what they believe is a rival business. Now a District Court judge in New York has ruled that Papermaster must cease work for Apple as it’s possible that he is breaking a ‘non compete’ clause in his contract with IBM.

Last week Apple announced that Papermaster was to replace Fadell on their iPhone and iPod range and would be reporting directly to Apple boss, Steve Jobs. However on Friday last week they announced that he would have stop work based on the rulings of the court.

Apple will hope to get the situation resolved quickly as they’ll be looking to move forward with the iPod and iPhone after the loss of Fadell.

Apple’s failure to make their iTunes music download store compatible with other MP3 players besides the iPod could land them in court in Norway. The consumer mediator for Norway has said that it will take Apple before a government agency as Apple’s failure to make the digital download website work with other MP3 players breaches rules on competition within Norway.

Bjoern Erik Thon, the Consumer Ombudsman, stated:

iTunes has shown a lacking will to comply with our demand and we are now preparing to try this case in the Market Council.

Thon issued Apple with a deadline in September to open up iTunes to other MP3 players, and that deadline passed on November 3rd. Norway insisted on Apple breaking the link between iTunes and the iPod in 2006, but so far Apple has declined to do so.

Apple has made some attempt to open up its store to MP3 player users by explaining how customers could transfer tracks downloaded from iTunes to CD and convert them to MP3 format, but Thon claims this doesn’t go far enough.

iTunes maintains its previous views in its response to the Consumer Ombudsman. The company is in other words unwilling to make changes to make music in the iTunes Store available to all music players.

Following the announcement that the creator of the iPod and iTunes, Tony Fadell, was leaving Apple, along with his wife Danielle Lambert (who also works at Apple), in order to spend more time together and with their children, the departure looks like it will hurt the electronics giant pretty hard.

Let’s look at the ways that Fadell’s departure will harm Apple.

The iPod franchise will be harmed
Fadell was credited with the idea behind downloading digital music, and was instrumental in the design and creation of the iPod. He also played a major role in the further development of the iPod franchise and products moving forward.

Affects the development of the iPhone
In addition to the iPod, Fadell was the man behind the advancements made in the iPhone. Without his drive the iPhone would never have reached where it is today, and will struggle to move forward.

Apple lose a man who can take on Steve Jobs
At any company you need powerful, opinionated people who can say no to the boss. Fadell was one of those men. Without Fadell, Apple has lost a key decision maker.

Moral will be affected at Apple
The loss of Fadell will harm the moral at Apple HQ and at the development team behind the iPod and iPhone.

Apple is now without a Hardware Device Engineering Chief
With Fadell gone, nobody is able to make the decisions he made. No one can make the calls he made. He’s going to be a tough guy to replace, though they will try.

You’d think that after inventing the modern day MP3 player you’d be tempted to rest on your laurels and sit back to reap the rewards. You’d be wrong though, because Fraunhofer, the German institute credited with being the inventors of the MP3 player (and presumably on Steve Job’s Christmas card list for life) are looking to plough ahead and make new discoveries, this time in the Gulf.

Dr Dieter Fuchs, the GM of Dr Dieter Fuchs in the Middle East, stated:

In the GCC region, we are interested in short and medium term research and development in cooperation with local companies.

The German institute, based in Munich, takes on approximately 15,000 research contracts each year with global companies, but is best know for its work developing and inventing the modern day MP3 player, an invention which changed the face of music industry, both in terms of listening to music and in the way music is purchased by the consumer.

Now Fraunhofer has partnered with companies in the Middle East, including Dubai Techno Park, in a bid to locate and develop new projects that will hopefully shape the world in much the same way as the MP3 player already has.