On Tuesday, Apple unveiled a somewhat surprising new model of the iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The latest iPod, in fact, was introduced in 2015 along with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and hasn't been updated since. From the aesthetic point of view in the new iPod nothing changes, but the main innovations concern the hardware. The new iPod features an A10 chip, less powerful than the A12 Bionic of the latest iPhone models, but still a big step up from the A8 of the previous iPod. Basically, according to Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of marketing, the new iPod “is twice as fast as the previous one”.
The new iPod has the advantage of having the computing power of an iPhone 7, a smartphone of a few years ago but still of excellent quality, at a relatively low price: 249 euros for the 32 GB model of internal memory, 359 euros for the 128 GB model and 469 euros for the 256 GB model. It will be available in six colors: pink, blue, silver, space gray, gold, and red. The iPod has many features of iPhones: it can be used to stream or download music, to send messages via the iMessage app and make group calls on FaceTime, to use augmented reality and play games (it will support Apple Arcade, the subscription video game service that will arrive next fall).
Apple's choice to focus again on a product that is now considered obsolete compared to the latest generation smartphones is not accidental. In Apple's plans, the new iPod should serve to attract those people who do not want or cannot buy an iPhone because it is too expensive. In fact, in the last year, Apple's revenues have decreased mainly due to the reduction in sales of the company's flagship product, the iPhone: in the second quarter of 2019, revenues from the sale of iPhones decreased by 17 percent. compared to the same period of the previous year. This is a crisis that has been going on for some time and that has affected all smartphone manufacturers to a bit, in an increasingly saturated market where consumers don't change phones very often and, if they do, they prefer to buy a cheaper model. of iPhones.
