The iPod is ten years old and has come along way – branching out into smaller devices (the Nano and the Shuffle), touchscreen devices (the Touch and the iPhone), and adding capacity (the Classic) – all of which have helped to turn Apple around as a company.
But TUAW are claiming that the iPod Classic and Shuffle are going the way of the dodo sooner rather than later as part of their “product transition”. The disappearance of the Classic seems likely as it didn’t get any form of an upgrade last year and has pretty much been replaced by the Touch, and as that gets more storage there is little reason to keep selling the Classic.
The Shuffle, however, is a different story. It offers Apple a way to get consumers into their iTunes ecosystem for just $49 – from which they can sell music, tv, or films or more importantly upsell their other devices. How many people do you think start with a Shuffle but then upgrade to an iPod Touch or an iPhone once they get the money as they have seen Apple’s seamless integration? To remove that low barrier to entry seems an odd move from the Cupertino-based company.
Many people also use the Shuffle in the gym for both its cost (it doesn;t matter so much if you drop/break it) and its very light weight design. I am not saying that the Shuffle itself will stay (and I don’t have access to TUAW’s unnamed source), but if it is replaced I believe Apple will replace it with a another model for a similar price and with a similar size.
9to5Mac is claiming that if Apple introduces a low cost iPhone that is free on contract then that will preclude the need for a Shuffle, but I’m not so sure. iPhones have been free on contract in the UK for years and that has not slowed the sales of the Shuffle – it is in a completely different product category. The Shuffle is seen as a risk-free way for someone to get on the Apple ladder, an almost disposable music product that still manages to have some of that Apple caché. Unless a new iPhone Nano is offered on tariffs as low as £15/month I really don’t see the markets of the two products overlapping at all, and even then there would still be a market for the Shuffle all be it a little smaller.
We will see on October 4th whether any of these claims and predictions are true I suppose.