Are iPods on their Deathbeds?

Remember when the first few iPod commercials came out and showed the silhouettes of people dancing around with the white iPods in their hands and the white headphone cords swinging around the screen as they moved? Of course you do. They were awesome and something we had never really seen before. Sure, we had models of MP3 players floating aroung the market but no one quite had a grasp on how functional and useful they could be until Apple came along.

Well, times are a changin' and since the introduction of the iPod, dozens of products and variations of those products have been available to consumers, each one just being a little better than the last. Although Apple just came out with new lines of the iPod nano, shuffle, and touch, it leaves me wondering if it is too little to late. It seems to me that the iPod, in this race to consumer and market domination, is the hare. It came out of the gates fast, but now these new products are closing in on the finish line and leaving the iPod in the dust. Im my opinion, Apple will need to soon come to a conclusion about the continuation and fate of the iPod product line. Apple is clearly a goliath in today's electronic world; the sales revenue of the iPhone alone is greater than all of Microsoft's sales revenue combined. But again, what about the iPod?


What is the iPod's problem?

With the rapid advancement and improvements of the iPhone, with more memory and functionability, consumers are beginning (if they haven't already) to listen to all of their music right on their phones, rather than having a separate device to pay for and carry around. Consumers strive to have less "baggage" and desire all of their entertainment needs in one location, and that is the iPhone.

What are iPod advertisements trying to accomplish?

Apple wants to bring back the fun and excitement of using an iPod. They are showcasing new colors, new screen sizes and layout, new apps and features, and better screen resolutions, as seen in the new iPod touch.

Who is the target for the new iPods?

I think that Apple is trying to focus on the younger generation for their new iPods. Kids who listen to music regularly but are not allowed to have a phone that allows them to listen to music. An iPhone is very expensive and for those parents who do not want their children to have a phone that is that expensive, the iPod is the product that will solve their music-listening dilemma.

Why should you still buy and iPod?

For those with a diverse taste and an expansive music library, they will need all of the memory that they can get. If you would purchase an iPhone with 16GB or 32GB of memory and you load it up with apps, take a lot of photos and videos, or do anything else that will fill up that memory, it doesn't leave much extra space for that large library of music. IPods offer a single and uncontaminated space for you to store your music. So, instead of having 3 or 4GBs of scrap memory left on an iPhone to cram in your music, you will have an entire device and all 16 or 32GBs of memory to fill with all of your favorite artists and tracks you can think of.