14 DAY TRIAL // It’s sad every time we hear that the iPod is slowly dying on us. Once a landmark of portable technology, the iconic media players are slowly falling into oblivion. The reason? Most likely, the iPhone.
According to the latest conference call discussing Apple’s quarterly earnings, the iPod has again registered slender sales (if you can call 2.6 million a small number), about 24 percent lower than the year-ago-quarter.
Mind you, this happens every quarter (albeit with some fluctuating numbers), but the player’s death is as obvious as is its the decline year-over-year.
Indirect confirmation from Cook
Once every few months, Cook and his financial team sit down at a big table with a bunch of microphones around them and discuss the company’s earnings over the previous quarter. It’s not just Apple that does that. Every big company does that. It’s something of a requirement coming from money-crazed investors, who listen closely to what the black suits at Apple have to say during these calls.
One tidbit of information that came out at the last call was that iPods had sold a meagre 2.6 million units. That’s still a number most competitors would die to report during their own quarterly calls, but for Apple, that’s pocket change.
Speaking to analysts this week, Cook said that the iPod was no longer its own product category starting from that point. Its sales numbers would be lumped in with accessories, Apple TV, and the Apple Watch, he said. In other words, we’ll never witness the dying of the iPod – at least not on paper – as the next conference call won’t mention it.
What killed the iPod?
“We looked at current revenue and decided that we would lump everything that wasn't a Mac, or an iPad, or an iPhone, or a service in one kind of category,” Cook said. “In the future, we might decide something different.”
That’s another way of saying “don’t call it dead just yet.” But we all know that the iPod has been on its death bed ever since the iPhone came about.
And it’s only natural when you think about it. iPhones have everything that iPods have in them, plus Internet and communications tools. People these days carry their smartphone everywhere, and since that smartphone includes a media player, there’s no real reason to carry two devices with you.
However, this doesn’t mean Apple is planning to scrub the iPod from its shelves anytime soon. Once its most flourishing business, the iPod range could still have some life in it yet. While the smaller iPods are clearly doomed, the iPod touch could well be upgraded to become a sleek, ultra-portable mini-tablet computer.