Yesterday, Apple announced that it had discontinued the iPod Nano and Shuffle, and that the new iPod line-up would now simply consist of only two iPod Touch devices.
Back when the iPod was introduced into this world (2001), Steve Jobs unveiled the "Digital Hub" strategy in which the PC would be in the centre of you digital life, connecting and managing all the content that you either acquired through your devices (still cameras or camcorders) or purchased (via iTunes or via physical CDs). This was also an assertion that despite the negativity surrounding the future of PCs at that time, the Mac would actually continue to thrive through successful execution of this strategy. Fast forward to 2011, Steve Jobs announces iCloud, which essentially replaces the central position of the PC in the "Digital Hub" with cloud-based services. PCs, iPhones and iPads will be equal citizens and will sync to the cloud; PCs will no longer be the Hub that connects everything together.
Apple has diligently executed on this strategy. For example, managing your photos no longer requires a PC, and even the ones that you only have on a memory card can be transferred to your iOS device (via a card reader) and synced to the cloud. For your music, you can purchase and listen to it from your iOS devices as well as your PCs.
The only devices that still required a PC, the holdouts from the Digital Hub era, were the iPod Nano and the Shuffle. Therefore, Apple's decision to discontinue these projects is symbolic not only of the decreased role of audio only devices, but also of the diminished role of PCs for consumers.
In fact, when you consider the newly announced HomePod which is very much an audio-only device, the argument that this is just about audio-only devices being obsoleted by smartphones no longer holds water. Apple clearly thinks that audio-only devices even without adequate touch screens have an important role. The difference between the HomePod and the iPod Nano and Shuffle, and the reason why one is being newly introduced while the other is being discontinued, is more about being connected to the Internet and being able to directly download/stream content. It is also about being able to use Siri, which again requires an Internet connection (at least today).
This suggests that maybe in the near future, we might see an iPod Shuffle-like device again. This time however, it will use Siri as its main user interface, and it will connect directly to your iTunes library in the cloud or download songs from Apple Music. It might actually be worn on your wrist.
Naofumi Kagami 