“Happy Anniversary iPod! Hard as it is to believe, tomorrow marks five years since those ubiquitous white earplugs started appearing in hipster’s ears,” Peter Lauria reports for The New York Post.
“Apple’s iTunes accounts for more than 80 percent of online music sales, and the iPod commands a similar share of the device market,” Lauria reports.
“More staggering than the impact the iPod has had on the music industry is the impact the device has had an Apple’s bottom line,” Lauria reports. “Apple’s stock price has mushroomed about 800 percent, from $9 per share to $79, on a post-split basis, since iPod’s were introduced. For this fiscal year, Apple has rung up $7.7 billion on the sale of 39.4 million iPods, which come in four varieties.”
“UBS analyst Ben Reitzes estimates Apple will sell 111 million iPods and generate $18.7 billion in sales over the next two years alone,” Lauria reports. “And that’s not including revenue brought in from the iTunes Music Store and pumped-up sales of Mac computers.”
Full article, with contrasting images of the first-generation iPod (2001) vs. the new 2G iPod shuffle (2006) here.
Related article:
Apple iPod turns 5: How did a little gadget have such a big impact? – October 20, 2006