Over the holidays, Apple's iPad and iPhone sold better than they've ever sold before: 51 million iPhones and 26 million iPads in a single quarter.
The lowly iPod, however, didn't do nearly as well. The company moved
just 6 million of the trademark MP3 players, a 52 percent decline
compared to the same period last year. All told, iPod accounted for just
$973 million of the company's record $57.6 billion revenue last
quarter. While some would probably be happy to claim they ran a
slightly-less-than-a-billion-dollar business, it's getting pretty small
for a company the size of Apple. You might even call it a hobby — if not now, then by this time next year.
What happened to the iPod?
Simple cannibalization, for one: every one of those 51 million iPhones
can take the place of an iPod. (Steve Jobs famously called the iPhone
"the best iPod we've ever made.") And as people increasingly get their
music from streaming services, a constant internet connection could be
key, something you don't get with an iPod or even a iPod touch unless
you have a Wi-Fi hotspot to pair with.
The decline of MP3 players shouldn't be news to anyone though, certainly not to anyone who follows Apple closely. In June, 2009, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer admitted that cannibalizing the company's MP3 players was all part of the plan:
Since 2009, iPod sales have
declined time and again. For five years, every quarterly financial call
would include a dedicated mention of how the company's "music product"
sales had slipped by a million units here, a couple million units there.
Every time, Apple would soften the blow by saying how the iPod still
had a 70 percent market share in MP3 players in the US, and remained the
top-selling MP3 player around the world.
But in the middle of last year, the company changed its tune. It failed to introduce any new iPods (unless you count the cheaper $229 iPod touch) and removed that dedicated section from its quarterly conference calls.
Story curled from: The Verge
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