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Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite questions to muse about is when will be the first year where Apple does not release any new product branded as an “iPhone”.

Everything must end after all; but I get wildly different answers when I ask that question to people around me. Some think it’ll happen in <10 years as other platforms like glasses take over, others will say it’s gotta be many decades away given how much the iPhone is a cash cow for Apple and they’ll milk it as long as they can.

FWIW, the first year without a new iPod introduced was 2011, and the product line was discontinued altogether in 2022.

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I think iPods are a bit different because they completely dominated the market. Being the latest drop wasn’t needed to compete with other players. This is the case with iPads now and to a lesser extent macbooks, but apple never managed the same in the smartphone market.

As long as Samsung, pixels, and potentially global attempts by Xiaomi in the near future are able to compete, they’ll need to stay current.

That was 4 years after the launch of the product that was also an iPod —namely the iPhone. I still don’t see the iPhone’s iPhone anywhere on the horizon

I suppose a lot of people who like to try and predict the next big thing would try and guess what the precursors are. For example where would you be looking now for the equivalent of a camera OS that would end up being Android years later? That was at the tail end of the period where consumer compact cameras were a big thing (before they were bundled into phones), so it could be that there's a path of evolution from smartphones to the next big thing, but I wouldn't want to place bets especially if you're trying to judge whether there's an audience for it.

I think no product comes close to the penetration of the iPhone, though. How would you compare that to what an iPod used to do? That's the fundamental difference with previous cycles. I think the smartphone in general is such a universal device, and nothing comes close to how much it can cover thousands of digital needs. Take the AI pin style devices: what are the incentives in going from a perfected device like the iPhone to something that limits you to a single type of interaction, that technically the smartphone can already cover?

I'm not sure if I would really call it a discontinuation of the iPod, given that the iPhone is basically an upgraded iPod Touch.

iPhone was released before iPod touch

The iPod touch was released after the iPhone (by a couple of months).

The first macintosh was released in 1984, and they're still selling them (ok, sure it's "mac" not "macintosh" now).

I suspect the iPhone will be more like the Mac than the iPod.

I don't see that going away

In the same way that Macbooks are not going away for the time being (I mean, unless they get a CEO that's even more of a bean counter – but I digress)

> when will be the first year where Apple does not release any new product branded as an “iPhone”.

Will never happen while Tim Cook is CEO.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/15/report-tim-cook-to-step...

I’m aware, but so far that’s only just a rumour, and I’d have given the same answer a decade ago.

The iPod comparison is a bit apples vs oranges.

the iPhone is just the current name for the iPod

Steve Jobs:

  - iPod
  - Phone
  - internet communicator

In a few decades maybe

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