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Apple Rolls Out New iPod Touch, Keeping It Alive in iPhone Era

Apple Rolls Out New iPod Touch, Keeping It Alive in IPhone Era

Apple Rolls Out New iPod Touch, Keeping It Alive in iPhone Era
Customers walk through an Apple Inc. store in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. (Photographers: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. introduced a new iPod Touch Tuesday, showing support for a product that hadn’t been updated in four years after long being overshadowed by the iPhone.

The new model will be priced starting at $199 and will contain Apple’s own A10 processor, allowing for a better gaming experience and new augmented reality features for the product, as well as Group FaceTime chat, Apple said.

Apple hadn’t updated the iPod since 2015, and the enhancements will support Apple’s new services, such as Apple News+, Apple Arcade for games and Apple TV+, due to hit later this fall with original programming. Apple is increasingly counting on services to drive growth as sales of the iPhone slip. Fans of the Touch appreciate being able to access most of Apple’s apps and content without being tied to a phone subscription. The new lower price makes it less expensive than an iPad, which start at $329.

The original iPod arrived in 2001. It wasn’t the first digital music player but it upended the music industry and put 1,000 songs in people’s pockets. The shuffle hit the market in 2005 as the first iPod with faster flash storage and without a screen, while the nano was introduced later in the year as a replacement for the then-popular iPod mini. Both went through several redesigns in their early years before being supplanted by the iPhone.

To contact the reporters on this story: Molly Schuetz in New York at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net;Mark Gurman in San Francisco at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Robin Ajello

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.