Ending musical deprivation

There is an old adage in the world of advertising: if a product is good, it will perform. The digital-technology based iPod has been so good that it has sold a 100 million pieces in about five-and-a-half years with relatively little advertising. No music player has sold quite as fast, not even the Walkman, based on analog technology, which came out in the early 1980s, although it performed the same function "" of making music mobile and cheap. Indeed, it can rightly be said that mobile music carriers have done for entertainment what books did for instruction, education and empowerment and, further, that if the Walkman was the hardcover of music, the iPod is the paperback. It is a great idea executed perfectly.

The unimaginative can be somewhat dismissive about technological marvels. They call them 'gadgets'. But they fail to recognise the fact that the gadgets are only the final manifestation of what the human mind is capable of visualising. To get to the gadget stage, you need the idea first "" just as to get to books, you needed Gutenberg to think of the idea of printing first. There is a difference between ideas (and the resulting gadgets) that make it easier to practise a profession and those that change everyone's lives. The iPod belongs to the latter category.

Then, of course, there is that elusive thing called style. Few come anywhere near an Apple product for sheer aesthetic elegance. A sleek, white sophisticated looking device, the storage capacity of the iPod has skyrocketed as Apple realised the potential of the market for high-capacity portable music players. It started at 5 to 10 GB, quickly moved to 20 GB with the Second Generation iPod, and reached the stellar 60 GB and 80 GB with the iPod Photo and iPod Video. Apple did not grow complacent with its initial success. Instead, it strove to better the product and increase its utility for the consumer.

It succeeded marvellously, finally incorporating a music player, mass storage device, photo album, and mini-TV, all into one small gadget. Realising that not everybody needs 5,000 songs (20 GB) on the move, Apple also started selling slightly differentiated products like the Nano, the Mini and the Shuffle, to instant acclaim. The Shuffle was more innovative. It did away with the screen, and consequently, reduced the size to smaller than a matchbox "" the perfect companion for joggers and the like.

In the final analysis, the iPod has banished musical deprivation, not just by its size but also because of the uniqueness of the downloading software called iTunes. Together, they enable the owner to access five million songs, 350 TV shows and as many as 400 films. Many people, mostly from the music industry, wonder about what the impact of the iPod will be on their business. It will eventually bring intermediation between the consumer and the creators of music to an end because of easy downloadability and storage. This has immense implications for intellectual property rights of the intermediaries who till now have dominated the market. If the iPod leads to the creators of music getting their due, rather than losing it to the music companies, it will be one more thing to be thankful for.

The next in line, due to be launched in June, is the iPhone. That is, an iPod, and a mobile phone, all rolled into one. It will offer access to the Internet along with phone calls. Traffic jams, at least for those who have chauffeurs, will not be the same again because relief will be a press-button away. What more can one say than "Wow!"