The iPod’s been riding high for a couple years now. War has been declared against the iPod by various digital music player manufacturers. Many pundits declared the iPod to be a passing fad, or that the mobile phone would be its downfall. We’ve heard of iPod Killers for a while. As of yet, nothing has been able to penetrate the iPod’s market standing. Is the iPod vulnerable at all?

Nothing is impervious, not even the iPod, though Apple has done quite well in maintaining their dominance thus far. For example, Creative has seen earnings sag, according to a Yahoo News article despite declaring war on Apple. the reason for Creative’s struggles given in the article is pretty clear: Creative doesn’t "get it" in terms of being cool:

A bruising price war has hurt Creative, but analysts said the dismal June quarter figures also exposed the fact that the Singaporean firm is seen to be lacking the "cool" factor associated with the iPod and other Apple products.

Apple, they said, has successfully marketed the iPod as a must-have player for trend-conscious buyers while Creative instead chose to focus on the technical aspects of its Zen MP3 players.

"It seems the problem is they are not seen as a trendsetter because that is basically what Apple is doing," said Claudio Checchia, research manager of consumer devices at industry monitor IDC in Singapore.

"You buy into the brand (Apple), you buy into the cool factor," he said.

Apple’s marketing message: The iPod is cool and just works.

Creative’s message: Our products do a million things.

Apperently in this case, cool sells. Unfortunately, I find that the iPod marketing machine is starting to get a little old. I mean, there’s only so m,any dancing silhouettes people can take before they tune out.

How does Apple keep their dominance in the market and fend off the large number of competitors?

• Innovate. Apple must continue find news ways of making people want to buy the iPod. Apple can’t rest on its laurels of marketing dominance. So far, they’ve managed to improve the iPod substantially. They can’t stop
• Keep the marketing fresh. If you ask me, Apple needs to give their iPod marketing a bit of a refresh. I don’t think scrapping the brand identity and moving in another direction would do any good, but some changes will need to be made before the marketing engine runs out of steam. Keep the iPod identity that’s going today, but give it a new twist. The iPod ads are already cliché as it is
• Refine the experience. iTunes and the iPod work very well together, but there are some signs of bloat and awkwardness creeping into the experience. For example, iTunes’ video capabilities can be quite awkward and go against the Apple philopsphy of tightly focusing applications (as opposed to the jack-of-all-trades approach Microsoft takes with some products i.e. Windows Media Player). Apple needs to concentrate on focusing its software and refining it, not tacking new features on haphazardly. New features are great--if implemented correctly. The end-user experience is one of the biggest things the iPod has going for it; if Apple botches it, there’s one less reason to buy an iPod.
• Remain price-compettive. This doesn’t mean Apple needs to start cutting $200 off the 20 GB iPod (since apperently, people don’t mind paying a little more for the iPod as opposed to buying a cut-rate DellDJ) but Apple needs to stay fairly close to competitors.

Can Apple pull this off over the long haul? I have no doubts in my mind. Apple must stay on their toes and push things forward. Otheriwse, it may just be a matter of time before the iPod begins its decline. Me? I have faith in Apple. Now if only they’ll start marketing the Mac better.

A few random thoughts
Coolest SubEhtaEdit geek feature (aside from collaboration and web preview): Copy as XHTML...I’ve never been much of a tweaker, but then I was introduced to Quicksivler. Since then I’ve installed a number of haxies and tweaks to increase productivity or change the appearance of OS X. What are some of your favorites?