Why is ipods so popular

Without the widespread availability of mp3s and broadband, the value proposition could not come together. But the iPod, launched in late — three years after the MPMan—was anything but a first mover. Apple waited, and then waited some more—until it finally made its move, putting the last two pieces in place to create a winning innovation: an attractive, simple device supported by smart software. Steve Jobs knew that, on its own, the mp3 player was useless. He understood that, in order for the device to have value, other co-innovators in the mp3 player ecosystem first needed to be aligned.

And, in October of , when Apple announced the iPod, those pieces were solidly in place: both mp3s and broadband were finally widely available. It boasted an intuitive interface design and was, for its time, lightweight. But the value of the device was cemented by its seamlessness with the iTunes music management software. Despite being available only for Mac users, the iPod was the fastest selling mp3 player to ever hit the market.

According to NPD Group, sales of portable CD players were still more than double those of mp3 players during the holiday season of Few would deny that the iPod is a great product, surpassing any other mp3 player offering. But is it six times better?

Apple was, after all, three years late. But perhaps this logic should be flipped: perhaps everyone else was three years too early. They do. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely, it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years. In the three years between the launch of MPMan and the iPod, each element in the mp3 player ecosystem turned from red to green.

But compared to other products at the time, it looked and functioned better. It held a lot more songs, and the now iconic scroll wheel made it easy to navigate a big music library.

Lisa Eadicicco: Before the iPod, there really wasn't an easy way to take a lot of music with you on the go. It really set the stage for Apple to be the dominant player when it comes to mobile devices.

Kim: But not everyone saw the iPod as the success it would become. Initial reviews were critical due to its high price and limited functionality. But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn't make any difference. Eadicicco: It seemed like an expensive product that only targeted a relatively small portion of computer users. What really made the iPod so successful, and it really boils down to one thing, was that it was very easy to use.

Eadicicco: Back in , it was actually, you know, pretty sleek and portable. The iPod was almost like a status symbol. You wanted to show off your music collection. Kim: But Apple wasn't relying on just the iPod. Nine months earlier, Apple released iTunes, a digital music player for Mac.

Eadicicco: The ecosystem was a little bit more fragmented when you get into other companies and the way they do things. They all had proprietary software that just didn't work as well as iTunes and wasn't as easy to use. You could put a CD's worth of songs onto your iPod in 10 seconds. The store sold over a million songs in its first week.

So six months later, Apple surprised everyone and released iTunes for Windows. Jobs: I'm here to report to you today that this has happened. Kim: Now anyone could use an iPod. In its first eight months, iTunes sold 25 million songs. And iPod sales exploded year after year. Eadicicco: The iPod became kind of like the face of, you know, portable MP3 players, and it made it really difficult for anyone else to compete.

And it also convinced people, you know, if you like iTunes and you like your iPod so much, then maybe you would like using a Mac too. Kim: But it wasn't just consumers; the music industry loved the iPod too. In the early s, piracy was growing fast. Napster had gained 80 million users in just three years. The music industry saw file-sharing companies like Napster as its biggest threat. Lars Ulrich: It is clear, then, that if music is free for downloading, the music industry is not viable.

Kim: ITunes bridged the gap between the music industry and consumers by providing an easy and affordable way to buy music online. Kim: In , the president of the Recording Industry Association of America told Newsweek, "The iPod and iTunes store are a shining light at a very bleak time in the industry. Eadicicco: For the people who had massive music libraries, there was, like, the big Classic one. And then, if you really just wanted to take a few songs with you, you had the little Shuffle that you can clip onto you.

They really tried to think about every type of person who was buying an iPod and what they would want from it. Technically speaking, the device was also one of the first released by Apple to redefine an industry. The iPhone and iPad that came after it were revolutionary in their own right, but it was the iPod that first explored the notion of a touch-sensitive device that also doubled as a status symbol. Before it, we had a relatively unwieldy Walkman as our only option for mobile music, and it still grappled with the issue of CDs and cassettes as its form of musical storage.

Apple replaced it with a sleek slab of metal and white plastic, whose luxury status quickly gave way to total ubiquity, and inspired generations of copycat products that still fail to outsell it. Successive generations refined a physical wheel and buttons into progressively minimalist control schemes, and primed the company and consumers for the engrossingly touch-sensitive experience of the iPhone.

And it was the first to convince musicians that the same fans that had stolen their creative output would be the ones they should reach out to, and iTunes offered that opportunity in its most direct and personal form. Jobs and Apple defined a market where once there was none, and profited greatly from it; but more importantly, they defined a future for an industry that was struggling to find its way through the challenges of the present.