The revolutionary device — out-doing even Apple, whose Newton was vastly inferior — was king for only a few more years than the iPod has been (and literally had no competition). But wireless convergence killed the classic PIM, and the company, while publicly acknowledging the threat at the time, was unable to neatly dominate the transition, Treo notwithstanding (can anybody say, “Blackberry?”)

Among the genius strains at Apple is their ability to turn disruptive change to its advantage, and to see opportunity in the flaws of existing products. When the iPod was introduced, the flaws in existing products were usability and seamless integration with the means of fulfillment (enter iTunes). The coming flaw presents a new opportunity to converge into a device that has already absorbed a host of single-purpose devices: PIM, camera, phone, Internet, email. The iPhone is the new standard, and guess who is best positioned to take advantage of iPod fatigue? And guess who is better positioned to continuing to make every last penny from stand-alone sales as the market turns? Let’s just say I’m not shorting AAPL.

Meanwhile, Palm continues its sad sack afterlife by first pre-announcing the Foleo, a device which would have served no known niche, and then killing it before launch.

really it is, or at least, in time it will be.
Apple has foreseen this as you say. Does that mean the iPod is dead?

far from it.

Music player phones currently on the market lack the functionality and ease of use of the ipod.
The iphone was released to combat these phones and challenge them.

The iPod itself will eventually just become part of the iphone software rather than a seperate unit, and its every bit as easy to use, and as innovative (ie- coverflow album art) as a dedicated ipod.

so why are Apple still releasing iPods?

because at the moment, the best ipod is an ipod, not an iphone…
The iphone has limited storage capacity due to cost. In time the cost of flash will dive and larger capacities (such as 80gb and 160gb now seen in current ipods) will be released.

The iPod is not dead, just, it will eventually live in the iPhone instead.

Steve Jobs is also wrong in thinking everyone wants to watch video on little screens. We don’t. We want to listen to music and audio.

The iPhone as a phone is a bad product. Steve Jobs will not meet his arrogant prediction of selling 10 million iPhones during the first year.

Why do you think the iPhone prices were slashed so quickly? Why was the 4GB iPhone discontinued? iPhone sales have dropped considerably. Steve Jobs knows it and is in trouble.

The iPhone will follow the same shameful future of the Apple Newton; some good technology, poorly executed by an arrogant company with too much greed.

The iPod demise is not Steve Jobs direct fault as an increasing number of inexpensive and affordable cell phones begin to eat up iPod market share as multgimedia players. It’s Steve Jobs fault in that he has focused too much on video and failed to make a good iPhone that is actually smart and decent at making telephone calls.

Apple has already delivered the device that does all that - without having to overcome “consumers [sic] magnetism to all-things-Apple.” Great prediction, Brion. Your future is already here.

I predict that in the future people will figure out that analysts at The Diffusion Group named Brion Feinberg have nothing worthwhile or interesting to say. Oh, no! My future is already here, too.

To the extent that we don’t like carrying things around with us, combining things seems to be a trend.

Of course, when they are combined like that there are problems. If you phone needs repairing, you have to do without your phone, camera, texting and e-mail device and your mp3 player.

When you lend your phone, you lend everything. So, there will probably be competing trends.

We’ll have to see how this pans out. It’s possible, that like the simm card, you will have camera cards and mp3 cards. Then, you can just transfer them to another phone.