Is it the end of the road for the iPod Classic?

An acute deceleration of sales for 1.8″ hard drives is getting people speculating about the possible end of the iPod classic. As you know, flash memory is king these days and with capacities of 32GB and soon 64GB in an iPod touch form factor, it’s reasonable to think that 1.8″ drives will have a hard time to compete.

There are two main reasons for that: 1.8″ drives are very slow, which makes them undesirable for computers. They are also bigger and consume more power than flash, making them undesirable for CE devices. Finally, 32GB or 64GB is “good enough” for a whole lot of customer who would rather have a device that is smaller, with a better battery life.

How much bigger can the iPod classic grow in capacity? The last study that we looked at indicated that most users have less than 4GB of music. Video changes the game a bit, but to what extent? Apparently, Samsung is not finding buyers with its 250GB drive, so that could be a good indicator…