After more than two decades, Apple is discontinuing its iconic MP3 player, bringing to an end a device that transformed how we listen to music.
After 21 years since its first launch, the iPod is no more.
The most recent iteration of Apple’s music player, the iPod Touch, has not been updated since 2019. Apple said that it would continue to sell this final generation while supplies last.
In 2001, the original iPod was released. It was the first MP3 player capable of storing 1,000 songs.
Since then, there have been many versions, colors, and sizes. Aside from the Touch, there has also been the iPod mini, iPod Nano, and iPod Shuffle.
A decade after its launch, Apple held by 2011 a 70 percent global market share in MP3 players. To date, more than 400 million iPods have been sold worldwide.
Apple stopped selling the Nano and Shuffle from its repertoire, both being the last standalone music players, in 2017.
Industry experts have for a long time predicted that the Touch would soon too be removed from the Apple products, due to the prevalence of the iPhone and other smartphones that also have music listening capabilities.
The more recent versions of the Touch increasingly resembled smartphones, and allowed users to take photos, send emails and even make video calls.
Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak said in a statement that the spirit of the iPod will live on.
He said that music has always been at the core of Apple, and bringing music to hundreds of millions of users redefined how music is discovered, listened to and shared.
Tech experts have been writing odes to the iPod today, and how the music player defined the company that we all know today. Tech writers say that the iPod made the iPhone possible, and furthermore, it helped put Apple back on the map for good.
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