Watch: Apple officially kills off iPod nano, iPod shuffle product lines
After nearly 12 years of service, Apple on Thursday officially killed off the iPod nano and iPod shuffle, leaving the $199 32GB iPod touch as the only iPod consumers can buy.
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If you don't want them, I'm pretty sure your Shuffle & whatever headphones you were willing to buy will continue to work just fine. By the time you are ready for something new, it's likely that the Watch & AirPod market will have expanded and you will have options at various prices.
For everything else there is craigslist & eBay.
then there are manufacturing facilities Apple contracts with to build the devices. They don't just leave the production lines in place for free. There is a fixed cost to keep that in place.
If if they can shrink 3 overlapping products (Watch, Nano & Shuffle) into one, there is a lot of economy to that decision.
... Get with the program!
2010 = $8.2b, 2011 = $7.4b, 2012 = $5.6b, 2013 = $4.4b, 2014 = $2.2b.
Sales dropped nearly 75% in just 4 years and iPhone sales grew at the same rate as it fell, a lot of people were just obsoleting their iPods with iPhones:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276306/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-fiscal-year-2007/
Not only this, they reported unit sales, which in 2014 were 14.3m units compared to 169m iPhones. The total sales can't be more than a few million at this point and revenue is likely under $1b.
Some of what contributes to this is how long they last. A Shuffle is a pretty durable product, it would probably last about 8 years without being replaced and this results in low sales.
The best replacement for the Shuffle for sports is the headphones that have built-in music playback, like these as there's no cable:
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Walkman-NWZW273S-Waterproof-Swimming/dp/B00I05EFO4
Apple could add storage to the Airpods at some point or in the Beats wireless products. The Watch has a few million buyers so that will have a similar effect as the iPhone. It's not necessarily that people who have iPods would be drawn to those products, it's more that people are drawn to the products and then they don't need the iPods any more.
In terms of cost, you can pick up an old iPhone 4 on eBay for $60. Cars often have SD card slots or USB ports, just get a card and load it with music. There are loads of options for getting a cheap music player.
This is something Apple has always done, they get rid of products that people aren't buying any more or more importantly wouldn't be buying any more in a few years. They look at sales trajectories and typically follow the ones that go up. Chasing ones that go down is going to be short-lived anyway.