Today marks the 20th Anniversary of the IPOD
It has been 20 years since the first Apple iPod was released in 2001, with the slogan ‘1000 songs in your pocket’. Whilst the iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player it became the biggest-selling digital music storage device in history, selling over 400 million units to date.
So what made the iPod the mp3 player that stood out amongst a sea of other, much cheaper ones? With a price tag of $399 USD in 2001, the price was definitely higher than the competition, yet, the iPod had a huge 5GB harddrive, which held much more songs than its rivals did. Apple’s mp3 offering also came at just the right time; when the first generation of mp3 players came out in 1998, downloading an albums worth of songs was an excruciatingly long process, measured by the Kbps rather than in Mbps or Gbps. Just 3 years later, broadband internet was on the rise, and with faster speeds came the fast rise of the iPod. Sleek, easy to use and lightweight, by 2008 it had 48% of the mp3 market share.
Although the iPod was discontinued due to poor sales (quite understandably, as the iPhone has deemed them unnecessary), it will go down in history as being one of the best-selling pieces of tech!
Happy 20th Birthday, iPod.
