(Column) – In my previous column about Apple’s video iPod, I had speculated on how Apple would launch something that is more than just a portable video player. On the surface, you might think that they have gone ahead and released what we expected all along, the video iPod, but if you take a step back and see, they have given you TV on the go. Yep, the magic is not in the device itself, but also in what you can do with it. Furthermore, Apple has gotten a deal with great producers to make their shows available for download. $1.99 is all you need to spend if you commit the cardinal sin of missing an episode of Desperate Housewives.

What’s more, they are not even that expensive. Going by Apple’s latest trend of introducing prices that put people out of business (ask those poor blokes in Taiwan), the 30GB and 60GB iPods are priced at $299 and $399, respectively. Competing products from manufacturers like Archos and iRiver will definitely have a tough time keeping up because the new iPod offers everything that they offer and does it better. Moreover, it even offers better battery life and support for decoding H.264 on the fly, which is the next big thing in video compression.

But getting back to the point, after all the hoopla surrounding the much-awaited video iPod dies down, you must realize the masterstroke by Steve Jobs. In one stroke, he has paved way for taking TV out of the box and on the move. Sure, some of you will disagree that its better to watch it on a 25" rather than a 2.5" device but then it’s not a television replacement. It’s simply a device that will let you take your favorite video Podcasts, music videos and show episodes while on the move.

Lets take a trip down the memory lane to the time when iTunes Music Store was first launched. I was fairly skeptical myself about it, since I could not believe people would pay even $.99 to download something they can get for free on Limewire or Kazaa, but what do you know, people didn’t mind paying for the comfort (not that using Kazaa is rocket science) and peace of mind of a legal one-stop-shop for downloading music at better prices than a CD.

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The same concept has been applied to videos, however, Apple has not been able to sway the movie studios the way they could sway the audio executives, which is why they have given away limited content for the new iPod. Maybe they are waiting for the $1.99 video downloads to take off before going back to the studios and negotiate better pricing for itself and (hopefully) for the consumers because these $1.99 for each download per episode is just pure profits for these studios, as this is a completely new means of revenue generation which has practically zero investment.

Maybe Apple’s plan is that when this takes off, we can get a fuller catalogue and probably go ahead and combat on-demand video on the Internet altogether.

Will Apple succeed? I don’t know, but I do know that it will face some stiff competition from Microsoft and the new Akimbo system on the Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). Akimbo offers content in 75 categories from 150 providers which is a far more than the three shows offered by Apple, and this could most definitely throw a spanner in the works unless Apple goes the distance and ties up a deal with Akimbo for letting people download content on their iPods using iTunes. The content would be pay-per-use and will probably expire once you’ve seen it, but it will give much more content than what Apple currently has and what it’s likely to have for some time to come.

Launching a video iPod and signing contracts with movie studios is just the beginning. Would Apple be as successful with video iPods as it is with its regular iPods? It’ll be an interesting thing to watch out for.