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As Levine describes the consumer mentality through examples – the iPod has evolved into an entire musical experience. Consumers want to take this little gadget everywhere they go with them – into their cars, homes, at work and just about everywhere they can. The demand for such luxuries has companies finding solutions such as plug-in adapters into car cigarette lighters, wireless transmitters that enable FM radio access, purse designers that can store iPods and other such peripherals. Companies such as Monster cabling systems and Belk in were among the first few to tap into the iPod accessories market. To provide some understanding on the size of the iPod ‘ecosystem’, Eric Tong, the Vice President for Marketing of Belk in states that for when iPod sales hit 4 million, accessory sales registered sales of approximately 2.7million. That amounts to almost three fourths of all iPod users having some form of accessory. Along the same lines, with accessories priced between $20 and $200, the math equates to the size of the iPod ecosystems as a $75 million market.

Levine also dwells into why the accessory market is so popular with the sale of iPods. According to him, the single most popular reason is that the product fits naturally with any accessories that make it user-friendlier. For instance, initially iPods were only confined to listeners who required using the portable like a Walkman. Over time, demands for usage across the spectrum of their daily lives became necessity and new innovative methods were discovered. When consumers wanted to carry their ‘song lists’ into their cars or into their offices or wanted to download music on the move from the Internet or listening to the radio in conjunction with their recorded songs – each provided the motivation for companies to step in with new and innovative accessories.

Interestingly though, the first accessory forth iPod was introduced by Apple itself. During the initial phased of test marketing the iPod, the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs and other employees of Apple were unhappy with the quality of sound from the iPod when plugged into a stereo system. This drove the employees to try and utilise an audio cable from the Monster cabling company and they found that the audio output was far superior. 3 days before the final launch of the product, the company took a decision to sell Monster audio cables as an accessory to the iPod so that users could connect it to their stereo systems. Today, Monster sells $14 million worth of iPod accessories from wireless transmitters for users to connect to the radio to other forms of audio cables for different purposes.

(Levine, Robert1, ‘Profiting From the iPod Economy’, Business 2.0; Oct2004, Vol. 5 Issue 9, p47)

The parent company

So how do all these additives to the iPod environment impact the success and future of the parent company Apple? In a paper by Slender(2005), he discusses how over the years, Apple has moved away from its image as a contemporary computer manufacturer to becoming amulet-diversified company in areas of computing, software, electronics and music.

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