For reference, here's an article by David Heinemeier Hansson about it: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1397-why-an-ipod-killer-will-never-kill-the-ipod

In short, DHH talks about the three things a competitor needed to do in order to beat the iPod: - superior industrial design - iTunes-beating catalogue of content - better desktop experience than iTunes.

This got me thinking. The iPod was overpriced when compared to the alternatives and did pretty much only one thing: play music. Even with only one task, the competitors took a lot of time to actually beat it experience-wise (and that's if we are optimist enough to consider the Zune a better experience).

Fast forward to the iPad, it does a lot of things so it's even harder for the other companies to beat it.

So why did the iPod win its battle? And does it make sense to compare the two markets?