Apple Introduces the iPod Touch

Apple announced the iPod touch at “The Beat Goes On” event on September 5, 2007, with the first units available September 14, 2007 at $299 (8 GB) and $399 (16 GB). The iPod touch used the same Samsung S5L8900 ARM1176JZF-S processor at 412 MHz, the same 3.5-inch 320×480 multi-touch display, and the same Safari mobile browser as the original iPhone (launched June 29, 2007), but omitted the cellular radio, microphone (added in the 2nd generation September 2008), earpiece speaker, camera (first appeared in 4th generation September 2010), and GPS. Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) was retained, enabling Safari, YouTube, Google Maps, and the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store — Apple’s feature allowing direct music purchase over Wi-Fi without connecting to a computer, first enabled on iPod touch at launch. The device was thinner than the iPhone at 8.0 mm versus 11.6 mm, because the cellular hardware occupied a significant portion of the iPhone’s internal volume. The iPod classic (announced the same day) continued as a hard drive-based music player, and a new thinner iPod nano was also announced, but the iPod touch represented Apple’s bet that the touchscreen interface would replace the click-wheel-and-physical-button paradigm for the premium iPod.

The strategic importance of the iPod touch was platform expansion: the iPhone was available only on AT&T in the United States at $499/$599 before a 2-year contract, excluding customers on other carriers, in other countries (iPhone international launch hadn’t yet occurred), or those unwilling to sign a carrier contract. The iPod touch reached any customer with Wi-Fi access and Apple’s existing iPod retail distribution — iTunes, Apple Stores, Best Buy, Walmart — at a much lower upfront price without a carrier relationship. When Apple launched the App Store and iPhone OS 2.0 on July 11, 2008, both iPhone and iPod touch ran the same OS, but iPod touch users were charged $9.95 for the 2.0 software update (due to accounting rules for subscription revenue recognition that applied differently to the iPod touch than to the iPhone’s subsidized contract model). This created a divided developer market: apps had to work on both touch and phone, which meant the shared platform benefited from a larger combined installed base but also required apps to handle the absence of cellular data, location, and microphone on the iPod touch (later generations added GPS-free location via Wi-Fi triangulation).

The iPod touch’s launch coincided with a fundamental shift in what a portable music player meant. The original iPod (2001) was defined by music storage — 1,000 songs in your pocket. The iPod touch added a browser, maps, YouTube, Wi-Fi, and later a full App Store with games and productivity apps, making “music player” an incomplete description of the product. By 2008–2010, the iPod touch was marketed as a “game console” (the App Store’s gaming library was substantial), a “learning device” for education, and a “pocket computer.” This positioning foreshadowed the iPad’s January 2010 announcement and simultaneously accelerated the decline of standalone digital music players — the market for dedicated MP3 players shrank sharply after 2008 as smartphones and iPod touches served the same purpose with additional capabilities. Apple discontinued all iPod models on May 10, 2022, when the iPod touch 7th generation (August 2019) was retired without a successor, ending the iPod product line after 21 years.