BGR posted that iPod sales were down 10% in January of this year, in the US. I actually find it somewhat ironic that Apple markets the iPhone as an all-in-one device, yet they continue to produce things such as the iPod Classic. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that iPod sales have diminished because people don’t want to carry two devices around with them. If you can make a device that performs well as a phone and well as an iPod, such as the iPhone (insert antenna-related joke here), then you’re onto a winner. You’re also going to subsequently destroy the market for MP3 players. I think this is the situation that Apple has created, and it may result in the demise of the product that started it all for them: the iPod. 

In the space of time before owning an iPod Touch and after I started using a smartphone, I used my phone as my portable music player. It functioned just as well as my iPod does now. As a friend of mine pointed out recently, “You haven’t owned an MP3 until you’ve owned an iPod”; when other non-iOS devices, such as Android, start shipping with their own music store and music player, Apple and iTunes might just loose their monopoly. If this happens, will we see devices such as the iPod Nano or Classic die out? Yes, that’s more than likely.