Apple is discontinuing the iPod after more than 20 years
After more than two decades on the market, Apple is officially discontinuing the iPod, with the current 7th Generation iPod Touch being the last model ever sold.
The company announced the iPod’s discontinuance on its blog, stating that the MP3 player is largely superfluous given Apple’s other products that can play music, such as the iPhone, iPad, and HomePod Mini, among others. While supplies last, the iPod Touch will be available at many retailers as well as on Apple’s website.
After its release in October 2001, the original iPod, renowned for its portability and attractive design, popularized digital music among the public.
The sleek MP3 player would undergo numerous revisions over the next two decades, from the 2003 introduction of a “click-wheel” to the iPod Shuffle’s screenless design, and it has since undergone 26 iterations, with the seventh generation iPod Touch being introduced on May 28, 2019. But after the iPhone’s 2007 debut and along with the subsequent growth of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, the iPod’s position in a crowded and shifting technology market seemed dubious.
Speaking on the announcement, Greg Joswiak, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, said,
Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared.
Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.