During the company's earnings conference call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on the state of the iPod, noting that the product is a declining category for the company:
The way we look at it, our business is a sell-through point of view less iPod -- all of us have known for some time that iPod is a declining business.
The iPod was Apple's "halo" product for years, getting new customers to buy Apple products for the first time. Since their peak in 2008, however, iPod sales have seen a fairly steady decline as the iPhone and iPad have captured more of the market that the iPod occupied previously.
Apple's last change to the the iPod line came with the debut of a new Space Gray color option for the iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle at its September 2013 iPhone event. However, Apple has not updated the iPod classic in over four years, with that device more likely to be discontinued rather than refreshed.
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Top Rated Comments
(View all)My Honda has tight integration with my iPod Classic
And I think that the iPod Classic can really only be discontinued if they bring out a similar capacity iPhone or iPod touch, my Dad's entire music library doesn't even fit on 64GB (He has tons of albums, and also 320Kb per second files) so really the only thing he CAN use is an iPod classic.
You want to sell more iPods? Remove the built-in memory and add a micro SD card slot. This should allow you to reduce the price. People will see the iPod as having more value and be willing to buy it again.
The real problem with iPod sales has to be that everyone who'd want one already owns three of them.
Spec bump nano and make it 99$ Drop shuffle.
Spec bump iPod touch and drop it to around 200$-230.
I hope they keep the Classic around for a lot longer. I really wish they had one with a higher capacity that could play 24bit files. I have a large music library and prefer the interface of the Classic over that of IOS, which is nearly useless for browsing large libraries. I bought my Classic last March at my local Apple store and the sales kid told me they still sell quite well, better than most people assume. My dream Ipod would be a classic with 2 or more terabytes of flash storage that could play 24 bit PCM and DSD files. Probably not going to happen. I just might have to buy a Calyx M or Astel & Kern AK 120/240.