Speaking to UK newspaper The Telegraph, Steve Wozniak said that the iPod’s time is limited.
“The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one. Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while,” Woz said. He certainly has evidence supporting him. You may remember the recent quarterly results call after which stock dropped because iPods had seen little to no sales growth. I pointed out in an article at the time that it was no reason to panic, as stockholders are apt to do, as by now pretty much everyone and their dog has an iPod. They are no longer new devices, and demand just won’t be as high. The iPod touches, along with iPhone breakout sales are what are keeping the iPhone/iPod sector growing at this point, and it’s because it is new technology.
Woz also talks about a change in how computer comanies do business: “It is time for the whole computer industry to maybe have a bit of a slowdown. For twenty years we have been in this replacement and upgrade market. It is very easy to postpone that when there are financial irregularities.”
Read [The Telegraph]
Wozniak seems like a decent enough fellow. Pretty smart. But he's been disconnected from Apple for so long now that I really have no idea why his opinions generate such buzz in the Apple community. I certainly wouldn't discount them, but I find it hard to generate any real interest in them, either.