Apple has announced that the iPod has been discontinued, 20 years after it was released. Similar MP3 players released by Microsoft and Sony did not have the same success as the iPod.

The US tech giant said its iconic music player has been replaced by other devices, making the iPod redundant.

Greg Joswiak, Apple‘s senior vice president of worldwide marketing said: “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on.

“We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV.

“And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio – there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”

In October 2001, Steve Jobs debuted the original iPod was released and was the first MP3 player that could hold 1,000 songs and 10-hour battery life.

“With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go,” he said at the time.

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“With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”

Since then, Apple has released five versions of its music player – the Classic, Touch, Shuffle, Mini and Nano.

Apple has been slowly killing its iPod range in recent years, with mobile phone technology enabling customers to listen to music services on their iPhones.

In 2014, the classic click wheel model was discontinued, while the Shuffle and Nano were killed off three years later.

Until today, the seventh-generation iPod touch was the only model that Apple sold.

Without the iPod, there would never have been an iPhone or iPod, according to its inventor Tony Fadell.

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Speaking to Tech Crunch earlier in May, Mr Fadell said: “We did iPod Plus Phone.

“You took the headset, which had a microphone on it and the one ear thing.

“You could use the Click Wheel to select numbers and names, or you could dial with it, like a rotary phone, which was the ultimate death of it.

“You couldn’t enter anything, because there’s no textual input.

“But it was an iPod Classic with a phone in it. Walk it back from the third-party prototype, and we were there, too.”

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