Apple's iPod Touch Could Be Made a Whole Lot Better

While I have been negative about the long-term prospects of Apple's iPod Touch (long term, it could very well vanish), the reality is that if Apple simply gave this product a bit more tender loving care, the sales -- for at least as long as this product category remains viable -- would probably improve.

Interestingly enough, the company did a couple of things to bolster its iPod Touch lineup the other day. In case you missed the news, here's what happened:

• Apple introduced a 16 GB iPod Touch with both front and rear cameras. (The prior version had a front camera only.)
• Apple cut prices of the 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB models from $229, $299, and $399 to $199, $249, and $299, respectively.

With this latest move, Apple makes the current lineup much more palatable, although the value proposition still seems a bit weak for the hardware that the company offers. A Nexus 5 phone, for example, with high-end hardware costs just $349 off contract. The good news, though, is that with just a modest bump in hardware, the iPod Touch line at these new prices could be quite viable.

iOS is so good that it masks weak iPod hardware
The current-generation iPod Touch sports the following hardware specifications:

Source: Wikipedia.

ARM Holdings' Cortex A9 is a pretty old processor core, and at 1 GHz it's not exactly the fastest available implementation of that core. Frankly, the A5 chip is a bit long in the tooth.

If you use the latest iPod Touch, you'll probably notice that although it is surprisingly fast for such old hardware (iOS is incredibly efficient), it could really benefit from a faster processor and more RAM.

Upgrading this is easy
The bad news is that the current iPod Touch really needs a faster processor and more memory. The good news is that this is probably the easiest, most straightforward upgrade that Apple could do. Though it'd be amazing if Apple could bring in the A7, further speeding up adoption of 64-bit software across Apple's platforms, the A6 chip is still extremely formidable and would run iOS 8 without a hitch.

Will this solve the iPod's sales problems? Not entirely.
With all of that in mind, while faster internals would dramatically improve the value proposition of the iPod Touch, it wouldn't change the fundamental problem that iPhone adoption necessarily eats into the iPod Touch total addressable market.

However, for folks interested in buying what is essentially a mini-iPad Mini, such an upgrade would be perfect and would serve -- at the very least -- as a stepping stone to eventual iPhone purchases.

Foolish bottom line
It's not surprising that Apple has neglected the iPod Touch since the most recent update in September 2012 -- the iPod is a market in secular decline, and the iPod Touch is no exception. However, every little bit helps, and the more accessible Apple's ecosystem is, the more likely it is that customers starting out with an iPod Touch could eventually be iPhone, iPad, and Mac buyers.