Russell Holliman, Founder and CEO of Podcast Ready, tells us his company has just signed a distribution deal with consumer electronics manufacturer Coby that he expects will ship 5-10 million mp3-player/ podcatching devices over the next 12 months, starting with the fourth quarter of this year.

By Holliman’s reckoning, “that brings the total projected to 25-35 million podcatching devices, thanks to Sandisk and a few others, in the coming 12 months. And with each [device] pre-set for 10 sample feeds, its going to help several podcasts reach a whole new potential audience.”

Coby will be pre-loading Podcast Ready’s myPodder podcast management software onto audio players at the factory. These devices are sold through retailers all over the country (such as CVS and Fry’s) as well as Amazon and online stores.

Several months ago, Podcast Ready held a contest with a prize of a coveted pre-loaded slot on myPodder-enabled mp3 players as well. Tech Talk for Families and Britney Mason’s PopCast won grand prizes and will remain part of the initial subscription lists until myPodder has driven 100,000 new downloads for each. (Sturgeon’s Law and Typical Mac User Podcast received honorable mentions and will also be included until they receive 10,000 downloads from new users.)

The lists of podcast feeds are “given to the devices dynamically when they are first activated so they can be changed even after the devices themselves have shipped from the factory,” Holliman explained. “This allows us to deliver pre-set feeds for a specific period of time or number of downloads. We can also deliver initial feeds based on the capabilities of the device or its price-point, and soon we’ll be able to base it on its geographical location at the time it’s activated.”

“It also allows us to give the podcaster some interesting stats that they can’t get from other sources, such as churn (how many subscribed today vs. how many unsubscribed), average length of subscription, and how many new subscriptions have been picked up from current listeners sharing podcasts through our system.”

We’re looking forward to catching up with Holliman later this week at the Podcast and New Media Expo.