Evolution of the Apple iPod 2002 - 2009

The Apple iPod revolution that began in 2001 not only overturned the conventional way of listening to music, but affected people's entire life. On October 21, 2001 Apple Computer, Inc. from Cupertino, CA, USA, introduced its first 5 GB hard-drive based MP-3 player storing 1,000 songs with a battery life of 10 hours and a sales price tag of US$ 399. A simple-but-elegant concept was born out of a tiny hard drive that Toshiba had developed at that time but did not have a clear market for. Only 9 years after the introduction of its iPods, Apple produced and sold over 21 million units during the fourth quarter of 2009 (Christmas time) alone: That’s around 234,000 iPods per day, approximately 9,722 per hour or 162 devices per minute. The logistics behind these numbers in manufacturing, quality assurance, sales and cost management as well as revenue handling, is hard to imagine.
Additional to the sale of Apple iPod hardware, the company also developed another brilliant business idea, which generates billions of US$ and a permanent revenue flow on top of the sales of the hardware for them: With Apple`s own "iTunes Store" one can buy music songs and albums, download or borrow movies, TV shows, listen to podcasts or watch lectures from respected universities and so on. As of January 2010, Apple has sold more than 6 billion iTunes songs, at the minimum price of US$ 0.69, and iPhone and iPod touch customers have downloaded three billion applications, so called apps, in less than 18 months. Payment via credit cards is done in fractions of a second. Apple is providing proper invoices with the correct VAT, all fully automatically, safely and reproducibly 7/24 in all countries with iPod distribution networks.

Download pdf