Hypothetical question: if, on those rare occasions when we finally drop in our tracks and go comatose for an hour or two, we were to find ourselves dreaming about running with no feet in slow motion down endless corridors while millions of angry airborne flash-based iPods attempt to enter our skulls through our ear-holes and eat our brains, would that mean we were obsessing? Not that we do, or anything; like we said it's purely a hypothetical situation. We're just... um... trying out a great new icebreaker for parties.

But really, could we be blamed for having recurring flashPod-swarm night terrors given just how many of those lil' bleeders Apple is likely to ship? Get this: according to Macworld UK, Richard Gardner over at Smith Barney figures that if Apple does have a flashPod slated to ship next month, the company ought to sell a whopping 22 million of them over the course of the next two years. That's a figure that ought to sound huge even to the most jaded of Apple-watchers. Oh, sure, if you think about it a bit, it's really not all that radical a guess; the current iPods cost at least $249 and Apple sold two million of those last quarter and expects to double that to four million in the quarter ending on New Year's Eve. Assuming zero growth (ha!) and multiplying by eight quarters in two years, that's 32 million hard drive-based 'Pods in the same time period.

We know, we know-- this current quarter includes that holiday buying frenzy thingy, so realistically we can't just multiply the projections by eight. But you get our drift: if you take the current iPods' sales levels, factor in the flashPod's (assumed) lower price, and consider the vast untapped market in Asia (where, in some countries, the iPod only has-- at most-- 3 percent market share), assuming that Apple doesn't totally screw up the design or implementation, 22 million flashPods sold in two years starts to sound downright conservative. Personally, we don't think an average of a million flashPods sold per month sounds all that unlikely. Or, if Asia really jumps on board, maybe even two.

Of course, as we mentioned, this is all assuming that there's a flashPod slated for release in the first place. But if we had doubts before, we have to admit that they're all melting away; between analyst sources leaking the deal with SigmaTel, plenty of chunks of believable "evidence" floating around in the rumor soup, and fevered whisperings from hypothetical individuals who should know better than to be hypothetically blabbing about stuff under hypothetically ironclad NDA, we're pretty darn sure that there is a flash-based iPod and it does lack a screen, though we've heard that the mockup posted by The MacMind last week doesn't look anything like it. (Then again, that was clearly labeled as an artist's conception, so no one ever actually claimed it did.)

Yes, in terms of general form-factor, we're hearing less "Milano cookie" and more "pack of Black Black gum," only, regrettably, minus the "Hi-Technical Taste" and the legend "Yes, Chewing!" on the goods. Only time will tell, of course, but we're hearing more and more that, barring some catastrophic production nightmare, the truth shall out by Macworld Expo-- and maybe we'll finally stop dreaming about gum-shaped electronic devices trying to infiltrate our craniums. (Hypothetically.) Except, of course, it'll take two whole years to put this little "22 million" theory to the test... Anyone got any Hypnocil?