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iPod Is Five Years Old, But Are Its Best Days Behind It?

October 22nd, 2006

Five years ago, on October 23, 2001, Apple released the iPod and the world of portable music was never the same again.

Actually, for those of us who can think back as far as 2001, the world of portable music didn’t exactly undergo a seismic shift on that day. In fact, even working in the tech industry at the time, I was not particularly interested in what a failing PC manufacturer was doing.

It’s easy to forget how low Apple’s stock has sunk (metaphorically) in 2001. The Mac was the butt of jokes, a niche computer for the publishing and graphic design industry, as well as those who had fallen for it’s ‘easy to use’ marketing.

As a result, the launch of the iPod arrived largely under the radar.

Things changed with the launch of the iTunes website two years later and sales started to skyrocket as the brand crossed over from the IT world, to that of high fashion.

60 million iPods have been sold and of those, 40 million were sold in the last year. Competitors such as Creative and Samsung are just clinging onto ths shirt tails of Apple and their sales don’t even make a small dent in Apple’s profit.

But is the bubble going to burst? Just like mobile phones before them, there must be a sales ceiling. At some point everyone who wants an mp3 player will own an mp3 player and then sales will drop off. Apple will have a strategy up their sleeve to cope with this. The much vaunted iPod phone may be one option.

And what of the iPod brand name? It is almost, but not quite, in the league of Hoover and Portakabin as a brand name which is used more than the generic term. However, unless it makes that leap, there will come a point at which the iPod brand will start to seem boring. The public are always after new ideas, not old ones repackaged.

Happy birthday iPod! There may not be a similar article written on your tenth birthday, so make the most of it.

Entry Filed under: Portable Music