RIP iPod?

Sales of the iPod are down 17% on the year. No one should really be all that surprised. For some time now, Apple has appeared to neglect the product, burying it at the back of their retail stores. Displays hidden in the dark recesses of Best Buy have made it hard to find. It's hard and discouraging to find the device you want, with many discontinued or out of stock. Like so much to do with Apple, rumors abound: that delayed shipping times signal a gradual withdrawal of support from the product, that iPod will soon be discontinued.

It's easy to see why. Combination devices now dominate the market. Since the iPhone can do everything an iPod can, and command a higher retail price, why push the cheaper device? iPads house music as does every laptop and iTunes account. In that context, a portable music device seems as obsolete as a camera that just takes pictures or a Flip that just shoots video.

Personally I'd be rather sad to see the iPod wither and die. In a world of complexity, I find its simplicity soothing. But mostly I harbor a sentimental respect for the little product that could - and did - lead Apple's turnaround ten years ago.

There's much mythology around the iPod: that it was an overnight success, that Steve Jobs personally designed everything that made it special, that everybody instantly recognized its iconic importance. None of this is true. Debuting just one month after 9/11, Apple critics were unimpressed by the iPod. "There are," wrote the New York Times's Gretchen Morgenstern, "no new must-have products driving consumers into electronics stores." Apple profits and share price slumped, quarter after quarter. Its share of the PC market fell to 2.3 percent. Initial iPod sales were modest - as was the ad spend to support it. When iTunes was launched in 2003, Real Network's Rob Glaser crowed "Apple has their core market of 3 percent to 5 percent of computer users; I guess we'll settle for the other 95 percent." Yet within five years, Apple was the number one music provider in the world.

This is what its customers love about Apple: that it defied the odds and all the mainstream market analysts; that while pundits insisted Apple was a loser, it persisted with a joined-up strategy perfectly poised for the moment when US broadband penetration finally broke through 50 percent.

In 2004, when Apple finally turned the corner, Steve Jobs made a little-reported comment: "if the iPod were considered the equivalent of a $400 personal computer, the view of Apple's overall business would change significantly. I find that intellectually interesting." In that context, the withering away of the iPod makes perfect sense. It always has been a computer and it stands to reason that it should cede its place to more obvious - and expensive - devices. But I'm left with a lingering doubt. Will consumers love these other devices the way that they loved the iPod? Can iPhone nanos and and iPad-lets generate the same emotion that music did?

"Why music?" Jobs was asked when the iPod launched. "Well, we love music, and it's always good to do something you love."