In January of 2007, Steve Jobs stroke another impact on consumer electronics industry. With the widely anticipated iPhone he announced in his keynote address, he started months of anticipation and speculation. By not releasing the iPhone before its official launch in June, 2007 he created a new must have product everybody is eagerly expecting. Just as with iTunes before, Steve Jobs is taking an old well known product like iPod and merging it with a new service to create a new revolutionary product. In this way he has connected mobile communication, mobile mp3 player and an online music store. What’s next online music store on iPhone? Well why not!

From 2001when the first iPod was presented, to 2006 Apple sold more than 70 million iPods worldwide making it a 40 billion dollar a year business, accounting for 40 percent of Apples total revenue. All of the success iPod generates is fuelled by only one thing, the love people have for the device. There was no tech gadget before it, which stirred up such passion and such cult like following like the iPod.

Cult like following was shown best with when the second generation of iPod shuffle was developed. With its low price tag and colorful design people bought all of them. Single iPod was not enough. The most fascinating fact came from the research in consumer habits that showed that in most families there are more than one iPod. Not just mp3 players, but two or more iPods. This love for the iPod is now shown in the strangest ways. Users are developing their own home commercials and posting them on the net. Services like iLounge, iPods from around the world, are asking the consumers to photograph themselves with their iPods and upload them on their site. People are even developing next generation iPods on their own. No consumer electronic has drawn such public interest as iPod.

Currently there are college classes being thought on this iPod phenomenon. A couple of years ago Duke University has issued every new freshman an iPod, as an educational tool. This in turn started to develop social issues. Since the freshmen were walking around the campus with their new iPods and white ear buds, senior students started to buy black ear buds, so not to be mistaken as freshmen. Currently iPod is more popular then bear on the college campuses.

With iPod Steve Jobs and his team developed a prefect product. This cultural phenomenon has tied consumers to them for years to come. With the songs sold on iTunes that can be played only on iPod and a new more beautiful and intriguing iPod coming out every couple of months they struck gold. With new technology coming out all the time and endless imagination Apple has shown us in developing this product iPod seems to be staying with us for a long time. And all of this from a company that was considered on the margins of computer business in the 1990’s and a man who was fired from that same company he founded.