An ode to Apple's fading iPod

ZDNet has an article by Larry Dignan, editor in chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as editorial director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic, about Apple's fading iPod:

Starting with its first quarter, Apple will relegate the iPod to the "other" revenue category, an area that signals that the music player just isn't material to the company anymore. Simply put, Apple has signaled that the iPod now has the same rank as the accessories it sells for its other products, putting the iPod in a category with Apple TV, headphones, peripherals and accessories. In addition, Apple will start a new category for iTunes, software, and services that'll cover content, apps, licensing, Cloud services, and Apple Pay.
What's interesting about the demise of the iPod's standing is that the device has touched every product that made Apple a juggernaut. The iPod served as the base for Apple's turnaround.
In 2001, Apple launched iTunes and the iPod. Entering the music player category wasn't an original idea, but Apple did it better than everyone else. In 2002, the iPod became compatible with Windows, and went from six hundred thousand units to ten million by the end of 2004. Through 1 September 2010, Apple sold nearly three hundred million iPods. More importantly, the iPod got Apple into mobility and created an iTunes ecosystem that ultimately gave birth to the App Store. The software inside the iPod was a starter set for iOS. When the iPhone was launched in 2007, one of the biggest selling points was that it was a phone that could play your music library. Sure, there were apps in the beginning, but the real sell was that the iPhone was like your iPod, except it could text and make calls.
When then-CEO Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, he paid homage to the iPod and said the smartphone was just like your iPod, only better.
You can go chart almost every product Apple has released after the Macintosh and see the connecting tissue to the iPod. Perhaps the iPod is fading fast, with fourth quarter sales falling 28 percent to a mere four hundred million dollars, but the device lineage lives on.

Rico says that a lot of other companies would kill for a four hundred million dollar product...