Writing for Fast Company, John J. Sviokla believes that "the iPod is doomed. Not this month, not this year, and maybe not the next. But soon enough, Apple will lose its hold on the marketplace for both digital audio players and digital songs. It's inevitable." Why? Because "the iPod has not changed much since its debut four years ago," while Apple's competitors are adding functionality to their devices and debuting new music services that work with a wide variety of MP3 players.

Mr. Sviokla refers to such open arrangements as economic ecosystems that drive innovation forward. "In an ecosystem," he writes, "more than one company can provide features or functions to the product." Because of that, he notes, "an ecosystem beats a product because its collective of competitors can explore and invest in many more ideas than any single company can muster ... This closed system made sense for the iPod's launch phase, but once the music ecosystem has the capacity for far more experimentation -- and that will happen any minute -- even Apple, a profoundly innovative company, won't be able to keep pace."

In the end, he believes that unless Apple opens the iPod and licenses iTunes to other companies, "the iPod will lose, just as the brilliant Macintosh computer ceded market leadership years ago to IBM's dowdier -- but more accessible -- personal computer ... Ultimately, no one company can out-innovate the market."