Michal Ždanský The dynamically changing market has taken a toll in consumer electronics – we've buried netbooks, walkmans, handhelds are also on the decline and PDAs are just a distant memory. Maybe it will take a few more years and another product category will also fall - music players. There's no concrete indication yet, but sooner or later we could see the end of iPods, the product that helped give Apple a second lease on life.
Apple is still the leader in the field of music players, iPods still hold a market share of around 70%. But this market is getting smaller and Apple is feeling it too. It sells fewer and fewer iPods every year, with just under 3,5 million devices in the last quarter, a 35% drop from last year. And this trend will probably continue, and sooner or later this segment of the electronics market will cease to be interesting for Apple. After all, in the last quarter, iPods accounted for only two percent of total sales.
Even so, Apple offers a large selection of players, four models in total. However, two of them have not received any updates for a long time. The last iPod Classic was introduced in 2009, the iPod shuffle a year later. After all, I have both models predicted the end two years ago. It would not be surprising, the Classic can easily replace the iPod touch with a higher capacity, and the shuffle the smaller nano, if Apple returns to a similar design to the 6th generation. The other two models are not the best either. Apple renews them regularly, but only once every two years.
It is clear that music players are displacing mobile phones and single-purpose devices have only limited use, for example for athletes, but it is increasingly possible to see, for example, runners with an iPhone strapped to their arm using an armband. I myself own an iPod nano of the 6th generation, which I do not allow, but I also use it exclusively for sports, or in general for activities where a mobile phone is a burden to me. I wouldn't buy a new model anyway.
However, the problem for music players is not only mobile cannibalization, but also the way we listen to music today. Ten years ago, we experienced a transformation into digital form. Cassettes and "CDs" were over, MP3 and AAC files recorded in the player's storage prevailed in music. Today, we are experiencing another evolutionary step - instead of owning and recording music on players, we stream it from the Internet for a flat fee, but we have access to a much larger library. Services such as Rdio or Spotify are growing, and there is also iTunes Radio or Google Play Music. Even Apple, which revolutionized music distribution, understood where the music industry was headed. What would be the use of music players in this day and age with music stored inside that needs to be synchronized at every change? Today in the age of the cloud?
So what will Apple do with an increasingly less popular product despite the fact that it still dominates the player market? There aren't too many options here. First of all, it will probably be the aforementioned reduction. Apple probably won't just get rid of the iPod touch, because it's not just a player, but a full-fledged iOS device and also Apple's Trojan horse for the handheld market. With the new game controllers for iOS 7, touch makes even more sense.
The second option is to transform the player into something new. What should it be? The long-speculated smartwatch is an ideal candidate. First of all, the iPod of the 6th generation already acted as a watch and was adapted to it thanks to the full-screen dials. In order for a smartwatch to succeed, it should be able to do enough on its own, not be XNUMX% dependent on an iPhone connection. An integrated music player could be one such standalone feature.
It would still be a great use for athletes who would just plug headphones into their watch and listen to music while exercising. Apple would have to solve the headphone connection so that the watch with the connector is waterproof (at least in the rain) and that the 3,5 mm jack does not increase the dimensions too much, but this is not an insurmountable problem. All at once, the iWatch would gain a feature that no other smartwatch can boast. In combination with, for example, a pedometer and other biometric sensors, the watch could easily become a hit.
After all, what did Steve Jobs emphasize when he introduced the iPhone? A combination of three devices – phone, music player and internet device – in one. Here, Apple could combine an iPod, a sports tracker, and add a unique interaction with a possibly connected phone.
Although this solution would not reverse the inevitable fate of iPods, it would not disappear the possibilities for which people still use it today. The future of iPods is sealed, but their legacy can live on, whether it's in an iPhone, a lone iPod touch, or a smartwatch.
"It would still be a great use for athletes to just plug headphones into their watch and listen to music while exercising"
Try going for a run or doing a bench press while "connected" like this and please let me know how it went. The only flaw in the beauty of the current Ipod Shuffle is that it does not have a hold button and other control buttons are constantly being pressed during exercise. The previous version was without buttons and completely optimal for exercise...unfortunately, it did not withstand unwanted washing in the washing machine.
Hold the play button for about 3 seconds and it will lock.
Shuffle used for exercise too. A long press of the play button will lock the key and nothing is pressed anymore...
I think the iPod will be reborn like the Mac Pro did. Desktops are on the decline, but the new Mac Pro doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. :D
I wouldn't even be surprised if Apple ditched the entire iPod section. But I would be surprised if he destroyed it.
I would see the biggest problem in the fact that a person buys such an iPod once and then it lasts for several years and there is no need to replace it. Even if it can also play music, it can still do the same.
It's nice how you get it all right first and then immediately start contradicting yourself. Yes, the buy&download model of buying music is headed for eternal hunting grounds, and when a classic music player stops making sense, it doesn't make sense to remake it into something else either. The only thing that makes sense to me is a "reinvented transistor" - i.e. a more or less single-purpose music streamer from the cloud. For a buck, from anywhere, practically anything. This in turn could fundamentally change the world in the same way that the portable transistor radio changed it sometime in the 60's - music stopped being wired to a fixed source and became available absolutely anywhere. Except that back then it was a relatively small offer of ready streams of radio stations, whereas today a complete cloud archive is available in the game. Me being Apple, this is where my thoughts go.
It's just that you need internet to stream and I honestly can't imagine a model that expects you to be online 100% of the time. In the US maybe. But when I imagine the coverage in the Czech Republic... it's quite unthinkable...
No, Apple really won't design a product tailored to Czech conditions... ;) I can very well imagine a device standing on a small mobile communicator, on good LTE coverage and perhaps on an agreement with operators on a cheap single-purpose data connection only to Apple's cloud...
That honestly doesn't make much sense to me. Why would a person buy it and pay extra monthly internet fees when their phone does it all? I can rather imagine using the storage as a cache, if that. However, I don't see it as a reinvention of the transistor, it really makes more sense for me to have an iWatch combined with an iPod.
As I already wrote, I think he will be reborn. There will be a drastic change, but it will still be "iPod", because why would Apple kill such a beautiful marketing name?
They certainly won't destroy iPods. Rather, they will remake them. For example, the iPod classic should also get more memory, support for larger bit depths and higher sample rates. Classic is aimed at true music lovers and they have abnormally huge libraries and resources such as vinyls and online stores with HD music. The display could easily be made smaller and the battery increased.
Well, I wouldn't see it too rosy with clouding, somewhere on wifi, or in the city, yes, but all you have to do is leave the city somewhere and the clouding is over - in villages with 200kbit edge shared with dozens of users, you can be happy to load the timetable, let alone play some internet radio :D