CNN Business
—
Apple said Tuesday it would discontinue production of the last iPod model it still sells, effectively bringing an end to the iconic product line that helped usher in a new era for the music industry and the tech giant.
Apple
(AAPL) said customers can continue to purchase an iPod Touch device “while supplies last.” The company also noted that customers can now listen to their favorite songs from a range of other Apple
(AAPL) devices, including the iPhone, iPad and Apple
(AAPL) Watch.
“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,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.
“Today, the spirit of iPod lives on,” Joswiak added, touting how the music experience ushered in by the iPod has been integrated across “all of our products.”
First introduced by Apple’s cofounder and then-CEO Steve Jobs in 2001, the iPod helped kick off Apple’s tremendous success with handheld devices. The iPod drew customers with its signature scroll wheel and the initial promise of holding “up to 1,000 CD-quality songs” on a device that fits in your pocket. By mid-2007, more than 100 million iPod devices had been sold.
That same year, Apple unveiled the iPhone, which was in many ways the spiritual heir to the iPod Touch. The smartphone, and other Apple devices that followed, eventually made the iPod feel like a relic of the past, long before it was officially discontinued.
