What role does the iPod play in the success of Apple?

According to Theverge, more than 20 years after the first iPod was announced and more than a decade in the shadow of the iPhone, it’s hard to remember how important the device was to Apple. In fact, the iPod has contributed to a Apple as it is today and is an important factor in bringing the company back from a difficult period.

The first iPod was introduced by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2001 reuters

iPod helps Apple operate more widely

In October 2001, the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPod – the iconic portable music player that synced with Macs via FireWire and held 1,000 MP3 songs on a 5 GB hard drive. It wasn’t the first portable music player, but through Apple’s advertising campaign, a lot of people showed interest in it, because with just a few clicks, they were brought to the music library on one device. Easy to put in your pocket when on the go.

iPod sales boomed a few years later as Apple introduced more iPod models and added Windows support. According to data from Statista, in 2002, Apple sold about 400,000 iPods. By 2006, this number had risen to 39 million units per year. The iPod quickly trailed the Mac in terms of device sales, reaching a much broader audience and making Apple known to the public as the company that made the products they carried in their pockets. Since then, iPod sales have continued to grow and reached more than 51 million units in 2007 – the same year Apple introduced the iPhone.

iPod sales continued to grow strongly before the iPhone appeared in 2007 reuters

But even when the iPhone was introduced, the iPod remained influential as Steve Jobs described the smartphone as “a widescreen iPod with touch controls”. It’s a fitting comparison by Iphone was created around many of the concepts that iPods have: must sync with iTunes for activation and setup. Even once set up, users will see an app called iPod, with the device icon decorated with a classic wheel.

Then Apple got the App Store in 2008 after half a decade of running the iTunes Music Store – a service launched in 2003 as a way to buy digital music for the 3rd generation iPod. Apple also started selling movies on iTunes. in 2006.

The dizzying success of the iPhone

The departure of the iPod has been predicted long before looking at the sales success of the iPhone. The iPod sales record was reached in the first quarter of 2009 when consumers purchased 23 million iPods, including the Shuffle, iPod Touch, iPod Nano and iPod Classic.

The iPod will never be able to reach that peak again as fewer and fewer people buy iPods amid skyrocketing iPhone sales, especially with the addition of the iPad in 2010 – a product that quickly surpassed iPod in terms of sales only 2 years after its launch. Back then, the iPod Touch was a good device if you wanted an iPhone without voice calling, but for most people, the iPad is a much better fit.

The iPod’s importance at Apple continued to dwindle over the next decade. By 2015, Apple included the iPod under the “Other Products” category in its earnings report, alongside Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats, and Apple-branded and third-party accessories. As a result, the iPod Classic was discontinued in 2014, the iPod Nano and Shuffle were discontinued in 2017, and now the iPod Touch is discontinued in 2022.

The 7th generation iPod Touch released in 2019 is the last member to close the iPod era reuters

It’s hard to imagine how many 7th generation iPod Touches Apple has sold over the past few years, but it’s clear that many people will want to buy one of the last devices as a souvenir because Apple has stop production.