Apple’s Forgotten iPod

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Apple’s Forgotten iPod

© Wikimedia Commons

The Apple iPod no longer has importance to the consumer electronics company. It has no line item of its own in the revenue analysis of Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) quarterly report, hidden somewhere in the “other” line. No wonder. It has been nearly sunset by the growth in smartphones.

The iPod’s introduction traces back to December 11, 2001. Its launch came the same year as iTunes. Together they represented the foundation of Apple’s cool portable devices, and the content player that morphed into today’s iPhone 6 family and Apple Music, and a predecessor of Apple’s video products.

The iTunes product, with the iPod as its primary form of distribution, also set the early model for how Apple splits revenue with music publishers and artists, which remains fractured to this day. Ask Taylor Swift.

The iPod is still for sale, for as little as $49 for the iPod Shuffle. The iPod Touch has a powerful A8 chip and high-end camera, as well as a super-fast wireless connection. The iPhone has all these features and more.
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The iPod has become an ancient product, and one that may not last the next several years. At one time, it was the advanced way to carry music in a portable device. That time is over.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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