IPod's reign at top to end says Apple co-founder

by Staff, Brand Republic 07-Oct-08, 09:15

LONDON - Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak has said the iPod's domination of the MP3 player market is not likely to last much longer and also warned the economic downturn will bring fewer product launches and another dotcom crash.

Wozniak, who launched Apple with friend Steve Jobs back in 1976, told the Daily Telegraph that the iPod could eventually find itself obsolete, like transistor radios and the Sony Walkman, and that the technology industry as a whole is in need of a slowdown.

Wozniak said: "The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one. It's kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get really cheap and they not selling as much."

According to Apple's quarterly sales statements, more than 150m iPod's have been sold globally as of March 2008.

Wozniak predicted fewer major product launches in the oncoming future due to the economic downturn, especially "the really revolutionary stuff which makes you say 'Oh my God'".

Speaking frankly, he said Apple's iPhone 3G could potentially turn off customers because of it's Apple-only application policy, unlike the recently released open-source Google phone, the T-Mobile G1.

He said: "Consumers aren't getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down. I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed."

Yesterday Apple's shares fell 20% after analysts re-valued the stock in light of weakened consumer spending. Technology giants like Google and Yahoo! have also seen their market values drop amid the financial crisis.

Wozniak branded the stock downgrade "correct" and predicted that a minor version of the dotcom market crash could be on the horizon.

He said: "For 20 years we have had this replacement and upgrade market. It is very easy to postpone that when there are financial uncertainties."

Overinvestment in Web 2.0 technology and social networking could trigger a replica market crash, like the dotcom bubble that wiped out $5tn (£2.5tn) in the market value of technology companies in March 2000.

Comments

g scandals - 07/10/2008

Woz has been an technology idiot for decades now. Forced out of Apple when he was arguably at his most inventive and productive he has declined to his current state of disorder over decades of non-productivity. He's always good for a contrarian opinion, usually so far wrong that almost no one will publish it in a serious vein. Usually, only editors from publications employing the most green of writers with little or no serious tech writing experience will publish his musings. It's been all quite a joke to read his thoughts to those of us in the industry who still matter and who actually know something about what we are talking about. Walkman indeed.

Trevor Bradford - 08/10/2008

I love Apple products and have the new phone but must reluctantly agree with Woz that open source apps for the iPhone would have made it so much better as would a slight smaller size handset. Apple's unwillingness to licence its original OS way back gave Microsoft their chance for world domination. It looks like they haven't learned anything from that. Put the consumer first Apple or you will regret it... Woz's views on web 2.0 and social networking don't seem so out of step to me, there has to be a sound commercial model in place for any business to survive. In the first dot com boom the .com companies over promised and under delivered. No reason why that couldn't happen again. As Andrew Marsden has recently commented at The Marketing Forum: "The internet is powerful in the private 'dream' world environment of people where everything is free, but seems rather less powerful in the 'public' paid for world where it works principally as an information medium rather than a paid for entertainment medium". Draw your own conclusions.