The iconic Apple iPod that revolutionised and dominated the multimedia player industry for more than two decades will soon be history.
Apple on Tuesday (May 10) announced that it has stopped production of the iPod Touch (7th Gen) and there won't be any new edition of the iPod of any type.
The iconic iPod, which was launched in October 2001, was the company's best-selling cash cow for almost a decade. At its peak in 2008, Apple sold more than 51.8 million iPod units around the world. Introduced by the charismatic showman-cum-CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, the iPod has the credit of lifting the company from near bankruptcy to profits. In January 2022, Apple reached another major milestone with a $3 trillion market value.
At the start, iPod had a small form factor and big storage capacities of 5GB and 10GB. With the display and round navigation dial, it was easy even for a rookie to get the hang of the user interface, and most importantly, they could store thousands of songs and fit it in any pant pocket and listen to the music hands-free.
This ingenious design actually killed Sony's iconic Walkman music player, which had a bulky design to play cassettes and CDs. Even Microsoft's Zune player and other contemporary players of that time just couldn't compete with the iPod.
Over two decades, it saw only a few design changes. Innovations include the tiny iPod Shuffle, which was the size of a thumb, the iPod mini, and the beautiful iPod Nano, which had a speaker and colour display too. I still own the latter and it is in good condition.
Unfortunately, Apple discontinued both the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano series in 2017. If you own one of those units, you won't be able to get them repaired.
Apple, however, continued the iPod legacy with the Touch series. The launch of the iPhone (1st Gen) in 2007 and later iterations over the last decade had an effect on the former. Since iPhones had larger memories to store music, people didn't feel the need to own a separate device for just music and some small games.
Here are details of quarterly shipments of Apple's three most popular devices from 2006 to 2018 (Credit: Statistica)
Since 2007, Apple has refreshed the iPod seven times. The last one we saw was the iPod Touch (7th Gen) in 2019. As they say, all good things must come to an end; 2022 will mark the end of the Apple iPod era.
"Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry - it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared," said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
"Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to the HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio - there’s no better way to enjoy, discover and experience music."
Apple enthusiasts can still buy the iPod Touch (7th Gen) in Apple Stores and at authorised retail shops but it will be only till stocks last.
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