450 million iPods were sold.

Sold 100 million by April 9th, 2007.
300 million were sold by 2011.
150 million were sold in the decade after, even with iPhones taking over.

Apple released the iPod on October 23rd, 2001.

That year, the market cap for Apple averaged 7.7 billion dollars.
Apple made 2 billion in revenue for 2001.
They came in at a loss of 25 million dollars.

Apple today is worth 2.4 trillion.
378 billion in revenue for 2021.
94.7 billion in profit.

Apple’s revenue grew 18,800% in the 20 years since the release of the iPod and I don’t think it’d be anything today without the iPod.

In 2001, 95% of Apple’s revenue came from Mac and products surrounding Mac.
By 2005, iPod surpassed Mac, bringing in over 40% of revenue, where Mac was under 40% at that point. It was also the driving factor for iTunes, which was 15% of revenue at the time.

Showing Apple, which was already a 25 year old company when the iPod was released had a complete pivot in business, where they went from a PC maker to a company getting 65% of revenue from the iPod or iTunes built off of it.

Revenue also grew heavily, hitting 14 billion dollars by 2005, for a 600% increase.

Apple recently announced that after over 20 years, they were going to completely discontinue the iPod, but without it, they’ve never be where they were today.

When the iPhone came out, Apple hit a record for the iPod selling 52 million units that year, up from 39 million the previous year.

Comparing that, the biggest selling phone before iPhone was Nokia, selling 250 million Nokia 1100’s, but really lacked a brand people liked.

Apple had iPod, which became almost a fashion statement having one, where people kept asking for it to do more things.

When it finally evolved into the iPhone, the branding was so ideal and made so much sense, Apple built a following of tens of millions ready to instantly dump the Nokia’s and Motorola’s of the world for Apple, which everything from the product to the App Store being an evolution of iTunes was brought by iPod.

Obviously everything good comes to an end and iPods lived longer over what I’d guess, but the entire way we communicate today and how most businesses function wouldn’t be here the same way without Steve Jobs asking how consuming music can be easier.