The smartphone has taken another scalp as the once best-selling app-free music players, the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle, are taken off Apple’s product shelf. The move follows the intrusion into the market of multi-use, connected devices amid burgeoning use of streaming, apps and games.
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 the writing was already on the wall for Apple’s iPod line. It’s taken 10 years, but it has finally put them to bed, with the Wi-Fi-enabled iPod Touch the last remaining member of a once dominant gadget line.
The Nano and Shuffle came out in 2005, two years before introduction of the iPhone, as less expensive and smaller alternatives to Apple’s standard iPod, which was launched by Steve Jobs in 2001 with space for “1000 songs in your pocket”.
Apple stopped updating the Nano and Shuffle in 2012 and 2010 respectively, and killed the direct descendent of the original 2001 iPod, the iPod Classic, in 2014 at the same time as launching the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch
