New Ipods coming soon ???????????

I just fished my old 5GB iPod—the original iPod, mind you—out of a plastic storage box under my bed, where it's been languishing for the better part of four years, and guess what? I plugged it in, and it's still ready to rock, after all these years.Talk about a blast from the past, right? But "past" is the key word, and indeed, more and more observers are speculating that Apple may soon give its last remaining hard drive-based iPod—the iPod Classic, introduced back in September 2007—the old heave-ho.

The latest round of speculation began after Apple's earnings call last week, during which company execs hailed rising Mac, iPod Touch, and iPhone sales, but noted that overall iPod sales are sagging ("just" 10.1 million in the fiscal third quarter, compared to 11 million during the year-ago period)—and that iPod numbers are likely down as "we cannibalize ourselves with iPod Touch and iPhone."

With middling (if still relatively robust) iPod sales sticking out like a sore thumb during Apple's quarterly briefing, it didn't take long for the deathwatch to begin.

TechCrunch weighed in early, predicting that "Apple's three 'pocket products' will eventually be whittled down to two … and it's likely to happen sooner than you think."

Over at CNET, David Carnoy notes that "the prevailing bet among iPod followers is that the Classic may stick around for a little while, but it probably won't be upgraded and will be quietly put out to pasture."

And on Monday, BusinessWeek warmed up its HDD iPod obit: "One of the first casualties of Apple's emphasis [on the iPod Touch] will be the hard drive-based iPod Classic."

My thought? I'm sure the vultures will eventually be right, although I wonder if Apple won't wait to kill off the Classic until it bridges any resulting storage gap.

Let me explain: The $249 iPod Classic may be the most primitive of Apple's iPod family, but in terms of storage, it's still the largest: 120GB, compared to 32GB for the $399 iPod Touch.

The iPod Classic might not run apps or even have the Nano's accelerometer, but with its 120GB storage capacity, it fills a niche for those who want to bring their entire music and/or video collections on the road. Even with a likely 64GB version of the Touch arriving by September, that's still only about half the size of the present iPod Classic (which, by the way, is a relative bargain with its $249 price tag).

Of course, as flash-memory prices fall, bigger and bigger iPod Touches will become a reality—indeed, I could easily see a 128GB Touch by fall 2010.