Hasta La Gadget!

I still have an iPod classic. Not sitting in a desk drawer back in my apartment–I’ve got the thing on my person at pretty much all times. It’s my primary media player, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Hey, I’m the kind of person who likes to have 120GB of music on him at all times. I honestly never know when I’m going to need to listen to some Norwegian black metal or Nigerian electric highlife. It’s my cross the bear.

It’s nice to hear that I’m not alone in this. According to new numbers from the analysts at NPD, the iPod classic is still one of the most popular music players. The hard drive-based player was the fifth best-selling media player for 2010–following four different iterations of the iPod touch (not surprisingly, all but one of the players–a 4GB Sandisk model–were iPods).

The 160GB classic was the only hard drive based player to make the list. Apple has been long rumored to be canceling the product–but such a move would likely require the introduction of an iPod touch with similar capacities–or, perhaps, the introduction of the long-rumored cloud-based version of iTunes (a result of the company’s Lala purchase), which would relieve some of the need for a massive amount of storage on the portable device.

Apple has certainly taken nearly all focus away from the player, which has, admittedly, lost a little bit of its luster in the face of shiny new touch and nano models, but the classic line has quietly carried on. As long as it continues to be a leader in the space, it’s likely not going away any time soon.