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Iconic music player falls to second-tier status as category gets saturated
THE MANTRA AT Apple these days is iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. But to the iPod and its fans, that sounds a lot like "Marcia, Mania, Marcia."
Last week iPhone grabbed center stage in O Steve Jobs' keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, garnering fancy features and upgrades, international distribution, an open invitation to developers for more applications, and an attention-getting price cut.
Meanwhile, all poor Jan Brady the iPod got was a sort of shout-out as one of the three parts of Apple: Mac, iPhone and ... music.
This has been going on longer than just one conference. IPhone has dominated Apple's public innovation and marketing attention for months. The lack of significant iPod hype has some wondering: Is Apple's aggressive sales and marketing push for iPhone coming at the expense of its stalwart sibling?
"Apple marketing, when focused, could likely sell refrigerators to Eskimos, but they have clearly shifted their innovation efforts in favor of the iPhone," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in an e-mail interview.
Other analysts argued that the reason Apple is ultra-focused on iPhone is simply that it has...