I-pods And Their Popularity Over Competitors

The most popular portable media device available today is of course, the ipod. It was first brought out in 2001 and that model had five GB of memory, which at the time blew all competition out of the water. It swept across the world and soon ipods were a common site in many places.

There have been five re-releases of the classic version and it is therefore now in its sixth generation. When you read the specifications of the newest model you can see how far the ipod has come since its original release.

The latest version can play most music formats along with being able to store and play back videos, games and images and you can store pretty much anything on it. With eighty gigabytes to one hundred and sixty available, it is basically, a pocket sized portable hard drive.

Of course, there were other models that took different shapes to the classic shape. There was the ipod mini which was only in production for a few years as the release of the ipod nano rendered it somewhat superfluous. The ipod mini was however the first ipod to have a coloured exterior (other than black or white), and was also cheaper than the classic.

Then there was the ipod shuffle, which was essentially a cheap version without the screen. The shuffle is a much simpler version and only plays songs. The lack of a display screen means that they are far cheaper to manufacture and therefore far cheaper to buy.

The most recent version to hit the shelves is the ipod touch. This looks quite similar to the iphone and uses a similar interface. In fact, some have said that the only difference between the ipod touch and the iphone is that you cant make phone calls on the ipod touch. There are some more subtle differences than that, but I would say that is a fair analogy.

Over the last eight or so years weve seen the ipod evolve to heights that werent thought possible when it was first released. With over 173,000,000 sold world wide it is the most popular portable media device on the market, and arguable the best.