10 years of the iPod, a road full of success

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On March 18, 2011

iPod Macworld 2002

The first-generation iPod on display at Macworld in 2002. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

iPod, Apple’s first MP3 player celebrates 10 years this year. Some industry experts believe that the anniversary of the gadget will not be a happy one because the portable device is the least popular from the range of company’s gadgets.

iPod classic has not been improved since 2009 when it was increased the storage capacity from 120GB to 160GB. In Apple’s online store, the delivery of the device was increased from 24 hours to three days, and several major U.S. retailers have announced that very few of them have iPods in stock, which has led to speculation that his production would soon be stopped. “IPod is essentially finished,” said Alice Enders, from Enders Analysis, a media consulting. “Sales are down for some time,” she said, adding that Apple has turned its attention to devices like the iPhone and iPad, which brought the company a record profit of 20 billion dollars.

iPod was launched just a few days after the terrorist attacks from September 2001.

The circumstances were not favorable for the iPod product, write the journalists of The Guardian. Just days after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, an Apple press release announcing “the disclosure of a revolutionary device,” which state only that there isn’t a Mac.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman, thought of a strategy to integrate the company’s products around the Mac’s, the famous computer introduced in 1984. Jobs’s idea was to place the Mac in the middle of a “digital ecosystem” so that all the new devices can be connected to it. The first such device was the iPod.”Why music? We all love music and always loved to do what we love,” said Steve Jobs at that time. It’s a huge target, knows no barriers and there is no market leader. “No one has yet found the perfect recipe for digital music” he said about Apple’s decision to launch an mp3 player.

The iPod can store about 1,000 songs, can load in one hour and cost about $400. When it was first launched it was compatible only with Macs, which has sparked criticism. Blogs by technology were filled with irony as well: iPod acronym stands for “idiots Price Our Devices” or “I Pretend it’s year Original Device” – references the fact that the iPod was neither the first nor the most expensive music player.

iTunes has increased the sales from iPod However, only five years after the emergence of the iPod, Apple gets the biggest music retailer in the world, due to the success of its iTunes online store. The idea behind iTunes is that people want their
music to be theirs not only to rent it from somewhere. Jobs has relied on the fact that people will collect digital music, as they used to collect tapes and vinyl records. Apple President persuaded the largest companies in the music industry to adopt his vision.

Currently, the iPhone has replaced the iPod. The phone registered a great success largely due to its applications and not music. “U.S. digital music market seems to be dull,” says Alice Enders, from Enders Analysis. “The problem now is that over 75% of music sold in the U.S. is on CDs,” she explains.