"Why Germany didn't create the iPod?" is a very good question I've been asking myself, too. Remember that MP3 was even development by Germans (Fraunhofer Instit

"Why Germany didn't create the iPod?" is a very good question I've been asking myself, too. Remember that MP3 was even development by Germans (Fraunhofer Institut). But it required an US company to start the digital revolution... I still remember the end of the 90s when I was standing at the Schneider CeBIT booth talking to the booth personnel about their new niche product: One of the world's first MP3 players (I think it even had a parallel port). Shown in a corner of the booth and nobody was taking notice of the technology - even the Schneider people didn't seem to be interested. I talked to them about the huge potential of this technology and made them aware of the fact the MP3 encoding was about to take off at the universities (everybody in the CS department started ripping&encoding their CD collections). But they simply didn't see it, they didn't believe that MP3 (that they) could change the world with such a product. What a wasted opportunity!