Tim Cook: iPod is a 'Declining Business'

[Razeus]

My 3GS was the maxed out version at 32GB. My iPhone 5 was the maxed out version at 64GB.

Ironically, when I got the 5S, I opted for the 32GB version.

We should have been at 256GB's by now. Apple can single handedly bring down flash prices.

This is the same as having to buy 1TB hard drives for last 7 years and never getting up to 4TB - at the same outrageous prices.

 

[peterdevries]

Textbooks don't create innovation. Minds do. Just saying.

That sounds really smart! Tell me how your teachers in high-school will react when you bring that up.

 

[Carl Sagan]

What are you smoking? iPhones have lauched with the EXACT SAME CAPACITY SINCE 2007.

That's unheard of in this industry, where you normally get more capacity and speed for the same price (all we are getting is speed, supposedly). Apple is purposely stagnating the market and innovation in the name of profits.

Microsoft did this with Windows. Yes, Windows changed the way we did computing. With so much profits to be made from Windows 95 on up, they made darn sure it stayed that way and thus lost innovation - unless you call a few face lifts innovation.

Looks like Apple is doing the exact same with iPhones.

Why would Apple create the next big thing when they are making money hand over fist with iDevices. This is the only reason they launched the iPhone. Because they could make way more money with it than the iPod.

Once Apple finds something it can make more money with than iPhone, it will. Until then, expect to keep buying 16GB phones.

Not true there was no 64gb in 2007.

 

[T-3one]

Agreed

I'm not a fan of this. I'm 13, can't get an iPhone, have no reason to get an iPhone, but I like iOS, and the iPod touch seems to be on the chopping block as more and more kids just get iPhones. Even Steve Jobs said that the iPod touch was just training wheels for the iPhone, and so when kids just get iPhones instead, the iPod touch is basically selling 0 units. So....If the iPod touch doesn't survive until I get a driver's license and have a reason for a phone (GPS plus contact with my Mom) I'll basically be boned. I'm not really angry with apple or saying that they should keep the iPod touch for 1 person, I'm just saying I'm kinda screwed. And also iPods are just generally cool, I love the things for some reason.

And I think that the iPod Classic can really only be discontinued if they bring out a similar capacity iPhone or iPod touch, my Dad's entire music library doesn't even fit on 64GB (He has tons of albums, and also 320Kb per second files) so really the only thing he CAN use is an iPod classic.

I completely agree with this. For people who want an iOS device but already have a different phone, the iPod touch has always been the go-to device. The real problem that is negatively impacting sales for the iPod touch line of products is Apple's tendency to create the iPod touch with a painfully obvious difference in specs from the iPhone of the same generation. I honestly just love the feeling of holding a 5th generation iPod touch, but I'd love to see the 6th generation one released with specs that are on par with at least that of the iPhone 5S. I know that I'm totally dreaming here, as releasing something of that nature would mean a drop in sales for the iPhone. *sigh* It's sad that Apple will probably never make a line of the iPod touch that is as awesome as its contemporary iPhone counterpart just because it would likely affect sales and contracts...

 

[Volkstaia]

I completely agree with this. For people who want an iOS device but already have a different phone, the iPod touch has always been the go-to device. The real problem that is negatively impacting sales for the iPod touch line of products is Apple's tendency to create the iPod touch with a painfully obvious difference in specs from the iPhone of the same generation. I honestly just love the feeling of holding a 5th generation iPod touch, but I'd love to see the 6th generation one released with specs that are on par with at least that of the iPhone 5S. I know that I'm totally dreaming here, as releasing something of that nature would mean a drop in sales for the iPhone. *sigh* It's sad that Apple will probably never make a line of the iPod touch that is as awesome as its contemporary iPhone counterpart just because it would likely affect sales and contracts...

I always thought that the iPod Touch should be the last gen of iphone, like, ipod touch 6g would have the spwcs of the iphone 5

 

[gnasher729]

To Apple,

You want to sell more iPods? Remove the built-in memory and add a micro SD card slot. This should allow you to reduce the price. People will see the iPod as having more value and be willing to buy it again.

The real problem with iPod sales has to be that everyone who'd want one already owns three of them.

You could try to point us at a company making products that compete with the iPod. But there isn't one. Apple will just continue selling them, with the space allocated to them in production shrinking every year, and the shelf space shrinking every year, but as long as Apple can get the parts, they will continue. There will be no re-design. Anyone who can re-design the iPod hardware will be more useful designing iPhone or iPad hardware.

That's unheard of in this industry, where you normally get more capacity and speed for the same price (all we are getting is speed, supposedly). Apple is purposely stagnating the market and innovation in the name of profits.

Wouldn't that be a great opportunity for a competitor? So how come there is nobody competing? Let's see - what is the biggest 1.8" hard drive you can buy today?

 

[gnasher729]

Wrong.

Ever heard of Olive and their digital music players? You will be no more successful shoving all of their technology (Burr-Brown DACs, multi-Terabyte storage, etc) into an iPhone form factor.. than shoving SLR sensors and wide lenses into an iPod Touch.

I think that's what he said. You can't put a DSLR camera into an iPhone-sized device. Just like this product is bigger than an iPod. You could probably by making a compromise in size put something close to a cheaper DSLR camera into an iPhone and sell maybe a million of them (since people would prefer this to a slightly better camera).

 

[Carl Sagan]

You could try to point us at a company making products that compete with the iPod. But there isn't one. Apple will just continue selling them, with the space allocated to them in production shrinking every year, and the shelf space shrinking every year, but as long as Apple can get the parts, they will continue. There will be no re-design. Anyone who can re-design the iPod hardware will be more useful designing iPhone or iPad hardware.




Wouldn't that be a great opportunity for a competitor? So how come there is nobody competing? Let's see - what is the biggest 1.8" hard drive you can buy today?

Not much competition in the vinyl turntable and Walkman space either...

 

[sishaw]

Sure, that will be the iPhone, and any number of other products...some day.

But, what will replace the iPhone?

Implanted chips. Obviously.

 

[NewbieCanada]

Saying this over and over doesn't mean that demographic actually exists in any meaningful quantity. Nor that if that demographic exists, they're interested in iPods any more than the general public overall. Really you're taking the old "they should make it because I want it!" argument and just adding "and I'm rich!" to it.

Nothing that anyone is suggesting is beyond our current technology. It's not like they're suggesting a 15" laptop that weighs 2 pounds and runs for 20 hours.

The fact that everything they suggest is easy to make and yet no one, including Apple, has made it or shows any interest in making it means, in my opinion, that the people in the business of making and selling things no there is no viable market for it.

 

[gnasher729]

Not much competition in the vinyl turntable and Walkman space either...

Out of morbid curiosity, I typed "buy floppy disk" into Google...

Amazon sells USB floppy disk drives, Windows 7 compatible, for around £15. Ten 3.5" floppy disks for about £9. I wonder what happens when you attach them to a Mac... Does anyone know if MacOS X ever supported floppy disks?

And I'm quite sure that these floppy disks are more expensive than 20 years ago. I also have the impression that writeable CDs are more expensive than a few years ago. I actually thought they would be more expensive, because you wouldn't buy a floppy disk drive unless you really need one, and then you have to pay whatever they are asking for.

 

[milo]

Ever heard of Olive and their digital music players? You will be no more successful shoving all of their technology (Burr-Brown DACs, multi-Terabyte storage, etc) into an iPhone form factor.. than shoving SLR sensors and wide lenses into an iPod Touch.

What's your point? Any audio circuitry that won't fit into an iPhone form factor is never going to get used by Apple in any product. And none of those Olive products are portable music players, I'm not sure why they would even be compared to iPods. Do you honestly expect Apple to release an iPod with "multi terabyte storage"?

Up to now, the "audiophile" argument has been talking about things like higher sample rates. Apple can absolutely support that...but they can do it in the iPhone as well, so that wouldn't give iPod an advantage. There's no way in hell Apple would put in audio hardware that wouldn't fit in the current form factors. And it would be stupid for them to do so, with their current sales numbers a unit that went far in the "audiophile" direction would sell worse than the current iPods.

Basically the units may get things like higher sample rate when a chip is available that does it that easily replaces the current one. We'll see "free" updates that require minimal R&D but probably little if any redesign, maybe when they consolidate the line to fewer models.

Let's see - what is the biggest 1.8" hard drive you can buy today?

While I generally agree with the rest of your post, he was mainly talking about capacity of iPhones. And he's right about that, the amount of storage in iPhones and other flash based devices has been very slow to go up, and the costs for going to the higher capacities is way out of line.

Nothing that anyone is suggesting is beyond our current technology. It's not like they're suggesting a 15" laptop that weighs 2 pounds and runs for 20 hours.

The fact that everything they suggest is easy to make and yet no one, including Apple, has made it or shows any interest in making it means, in my opinion, that the people in the business of making and selling things no there is no viable market for it.

Exactly. If Apple could see a big boost in iPod sales from things like raising the sample rate, they would do it. "I want X" isn't the same thing as "If apple added X they'd sell like hotcakes!"

 

[T-R-S]

I know some companies use iPod Touches (mounting them in walls) for home automation systems - a very cheap wireless remote system for all kinds of things around the house.
There are still lots of practical uses for them.

 

[redfirebird08]

I view my phone as a communication device, so my #1 priority is to conserve battery life in case of an emergency. If I am traveling in airports and so forth, I prefer to have a separate device for media playback.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Here in Australia, the iPad mini (with Retina) is almost twice (1.92 times) the price of an iPod Touch:

iPod Touch 16GB: A$ 249
iPad mini Retina 16GB: A$ $479

That's a significant price difference.

In the US though, I see the value shifts slightly towards the iPad, which is 1.74 times the price:

iPod Touch 16GB: $229
iPad mini Retina 16GB: $399

I don't include the low-end Touch as the primary comparison due to lack of camera, but I include the iPad Mini non-retina...

iPod Touch : $299
iPad Mini : $299

See? About the same device, one is larger in screen but smaller in memory. Same price.
That's a no-brainer for a kid wanting a device to "do it all".

$229 vs $299 is 77% of the iPad price.

iPads are killing the iPod Touch in America. The iPod Touch is supposedly the "big seller" and it is the price of an iPad Mini. I'm not sure who would buy or want a Nano, and the Shuffle is a cracker-jack item probably locked in form and function forevermore.

Apple needs to do a minor adjustment to the iPod Touch when they release the next round of phones. Then they need to dump the price down to $199! No point in making the iPod touch a current-tech item--an A6, similar or same camera, same memory at the low-end, updated BT and WiFi... done.

It will be a worthy item as is for $199, with camera.

 

[milo]

I'm not sure who would buy or want a Nano.

People who exercise.

 

[TheDoctor7x]

If only they would throw an SSD in the Classic and improve the sound quality, I'm sure it would have no problems selling, especially with audiophiles.

 

[deluxeshredder]

I'm sure it would have no problems selling, especially with audiophiles.

This is a very small market.

 

[milo]

Both of those comments are the same old ones, more capacity and higher quality. And they can do both in the iPhone (and iPad for that matter) and in all the iPods while consolidating the line. Also "improve the sound quality" is vague, does that mean higher bit/sample rates, better DAC, etc? While that improvement would be nice it would probably improve sales far less than increasing capacity would (or even lowering prices for that matter).

 

[nburwell]

People who exercise.

I definitely agree here. My mom, who works out everyday, has owned an iPod Nano for as long as I can remember. As a matter of fact, she just purchased a new iPod Nano even though she has an iPhone. She still purchases CD's, so I've showed her how to import the CD's to iTunes for her to sync to her Nano. She essentially just uses her iPhone to iMessage and make phone calls. I don't think she has one 3rd party app installed on her phone.

 

[robertosh]

The problem is that after 2010, Apple stops its one year iPod cycle refresh and the people lost interest on it. I had the 1G and 4G iPod touch, never had an iPhone. Now that the ipod is dead, i will chose the iPhone 6 to replace my current touch.

 

[kaldezar]

If they re-focussed it as a music device and increased the capacity to 128GB & 256GB options alongside the option to purchase HD music in iTunes it would gain a whole new audience of 35+ audiophiles willing to purchase a dedicated music device to sit in their high-end iPod speaker.

It's very short sighted what they've done with the iPod over the past few years and clearly demonstrates that Cook doesn't fully understand his own customers. Believe it or not we're not all teenagers in the iPod user base.

Totally agree, i have just bought a FiiO X5 as a replacement for my iPod classic, sonically it just totally blows the iPod away......but the interface is just a total disaster. How difficult would it be to make an iPod with high quality components and the ability to handle 192/24, an iPod Pro? I think there is definitely a growing market for higher quality audio for example the amazing popularity of Beats headphones which although they are not audiophile certainly lead people to expect more from their devices

 

[milo]

How difficult would it be to make an iPod with high quality components and the ability to handle 192/24, an iPod Pro?

Probably not difficult at all, but it might increase costs a little bit. They'll probably support that someday when all audio chips support it and it costs them nothing extra. Separate "pro" model? Never gonna happen.

I think there is definitely a growing market for higher quality audio for example the amazing popularity of Beats headphones which although they are not audiophile certainly lead people to expect more from their devices

As you say, those are popular but not necessarily the highest sound quality. A particular headphone selling well doesn't make me think there's anything but a tiny demand for higher resolutions on iPods.

 

[saxman211]

If apple makes an ipod touch with the same 160 GB capacity as the ipod classic, I have no problem with him discontinuing the classic. If not, I say keep the classic. I have all of my music on my classic and it's a beautiful thing to be able to access it whenever I want. I also wish they would raise the limit on iTunes match to 500 GB...

 

[eichwulf]

I really like the ipod nano 6g, though it was given to me as a present as I'd never pay so much for an mp3 player. I think if it is made cheaper it will sell much better, my other mp3 player is a Chinese knockoff of ipod nano 6g, but without touch support and twice the width and I bought it for $15.