Apple discontinues iPod Touch, ending 20-year iPod legend

As Apple prepares to enter the 15th anniversary of the iPhone, the company's less popular sibling, the iPod Touch, is also making its final bow.

Apple Inc. announced Tuesday that it will discontinue the iPod touch, the last model of the portable music player it still sells, a move that marks the end not only of one of the tech industry’s most influential devices but also of the iPod line that helped reshape entertainment and ushered in the digital music era two decades ago.

“Music has always been a part of who we are at Apple and bringing it to hundreds of millions of people is just as important as the iPod, which not only impacted the music industry — it redefined how music is discovered, listened to and shared,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.

On October 23, 2001, Apple released the first iPod, boasting that it could fit "up to 1,000 CD-quality songs into an ultra-portable 6.5-ounce design that fits in your pocket." In addition to playing music, the $199 iPod touch can also send iMessages and make FaceTime calls, but not make phone calls.

In 2003, the iPod music player and its iTunes music software helped people start buying digital music, itself a controversial idea as the entertainment industry struggled with music sharing through apps like Napster. In 2005, Apple expanded into digital movies and TV.

The first-generation iPod was released a little more than a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a move considered a major risk for Apple, which was struggling to get back on financial footing after nearly going bankrupt a few years earlier. Back then, the company was Apple Computer Inc., and it placed some of its biggest bets on entirely new product categories, like the all-in-one iMac, which debuted in 1998, and the consumer-focused iBook laptop computer, which launched a year later. Soon after, Apple introduced a host of other i products, including iLife software for organizing photos and movies and iWork software to compete with Microsoft Office. But arguably Apple's greatest success has been the iPod and its iTunes music software.

Over the years, the iPod line expanded to include the iPod Mini, iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle, in addition to the classic iPod. Apple stopped selling those iPods between 2014 and 2017.

The iPod has been eclipsed by the iPhone, the smartphone originally introduced by co-founder Steve Jobs in June 2007 as a combination of "the iPod, the cell phone and the Internet communicator".

The first-generation iPod touch, which was more similar to the iPhone and was called "the iPhone without the phone," was launched in 2007 and hasn't been updated since May 2019.

Apple said it will continue to sell the remaining iPod Touch devices through its website starting at $199 each until stock runs out. The company offers 32GB, 128GB and 256GB models and six colors including silver, pink, blue and gold.

"The spirit of the iPod lives on through its many other products that have integrated music playback," Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.