Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Apple pulls plug on the iPod
Production of the device that changed consumer electronics, music industries is phased out
The iPod began with a modest goal: A music product that makes people want to buy more Macintosh computers. Within a few years, it would change consumer electronics and the music industry and lead to Apple becoming the most valuable company in the world.
First arriving in October 2001, the pocket-size rectangle with a white face and polished steel frame weighed 6.5 ounces. It came packaged with white earbuds in a custom color, moon gray, and held 1,000 songs.
It exploded in popularity in the years that followed, creating what became known as the iPod generation. Throughout much of the 2000s, people wandered the world, headphones dangling from their ears.
On Tuesday, Apple officially said goodbye to all that. The company announced it had phased out production of its iPod Touch, bringing an end to a two-decade run of a product line that inspired the creation of the iPhone and helped turn Silicon Valley into the epicenter of global capitalism.
Since introducing the iPod in 2001, Apple has sold an estimated 450 million of them, according to Loup Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in tech research. Last year it sold an estimated 3 million iPods, a fraction of the estimated 250 million iPhones it sold.
Apple assured customers that the music would live on, largely through the iPhone, which it introduced in 2007, and Apple Music, a 7-year-old service that testifies to customers’ modern preferences. The days of buying and owning 99-cent songs on an iPod largely gave way to monthly subscription offerings that provide access to broader catalogs of music.
The iPod provided a blueprint for Apple for decades by packaging unrivaled industrial design, hardware engineering, software development and services.
The first-generation iPod’s $399 price tag blunted demand, limiting the company to sales of fewer than 400,000 units in the first year. Three years later, Apple released the iPod Mini, a 3.6-ounce aluminum case that came in silver, gold, pink, blue and green. It cost $249 and carried 1,000 songs. Sales exploded. By the end of its fiscal year in September 2005, it had sold 22.5 million iPods.
Apple amplified the iPod Mini’s power by making iTunes available for Windows computers, allowing Apple to introduce its brand to millions of new customers.
Still, CEO Steve Jobs pushed for Apple to make the iPod smaller and more powerful. The company shut down production of its most popular product ever — the iPod Mini — in order to replace it with a slimmer version called the Nano that started at $200. The Nano helped the company nearly double its unit sales to 40 million over the next year.
Perhaps the iPod’s most important contribution was its role as a catalyst for the creation of the iPhone. As mobile phone makers began introducing devices that could play music, Apple executives worried about being leapfrogged by better technology. Jobs decided that if that were going to happen, then Apple should be the one to do it.
The iPhone continued to draw on the blend of software and services that made the iPod succeed. The success with iTunes, which allowed customers to back up their iPhone and put music on the device, was mirrored by the development of the App Store, which allowed people to download and pay for software and services.