It seems unlikely that adding a camera to a non-phone would somehow disrupt sales for a phone. Particularly when the phone is billed primarily as an all-in-wonder convergence device.
A camera on an ipod touch doesn't somehow remove the flip-phone from your pocket. And leaving it off isn't going to do much to convince people looking at something sold primarily as having 'no contract' to instead get a phone with a relatively steep contract.
I bet the guys at Pure Digital let out a huge sigh when Norah Jones took the stage.
This was my initial thought as well, but I just can't see myself saying "Hmm.. no camera in the iPod, guess I'll have to get the iPhone instead and just not use the phone part of it." I doubt the camera functionality would ever be enough to push people into the cost of a new phone (contracts, initial outlay, etc.).
I'm not saying I agree with the logic or that it makes sense in the real world... I'm sure there is a lot of RDF in Cupertino. Not necessarily from Steve Jobs, but just from being too much of a mono-culture.
I don't know if it's still the case, but IIRC the iPod Touch didn't have Bluetooth support while the iPhone did. I can hardly think that Bluetooth support would be enough to push someone to the iPhone from the iPod Touch...
Even back in the day, I remember things like Apple limiting the capabilities of the video card in the iBook so that it would only support mirroring through the external VGA adapter, even though the video card supported adding an extra monitor as a separate display. (This was demonstrated when someone hacked around the limiation in the OpenFirmware or driver, can't remember)
Apple does this stuff all the time in order to draw distinct lines in the sand between where one product's features end and the other's begins. It's most apparent between the iBook/MacBook and PowerBook/MacBookPro lines dating back to the PPC days. There were many features they were excluded from the 'consumer' model (iBook/MacBook) that were present in the 'professional' model (PowerBook/MacBook Pro) that were not enough for a lot of people to pay the extra $700+ for the upgrade.
I've never thought that it made too much sense in a lot of cases, but it's an ingrained philosophy in Apple's marketing/product design dating back years. I would hardly expect them to end it now.
Dropping a feature like Bluetooth from iPod Touch totally makes sense. It has nothing to do with segmentation.
In case of hardware or software that requires per device licensing, it's about cost. Let's say that BT chipset costs $3 per device. They sell 30 million iPods, it's 90 million dollars saved on a feature that very few iPod Touch users cared about.
Really? There are a lot of people with Bluetooth headsets now. I'm sure they would love to pair that with their iPod Touch to also be able to listen to music... Don't know what percentage of people that is though.
{edit} I would predict that it's equally possible that there are a lot of users out there that don't care about Bluetooth on their phones either, but that didn't stop Apple from cramming it into the iPhone {/edit}
Ah, Bluetooth was just an example I picked from previous comment. iPod Touch actually has Bluetooth nowadays, it seems.
My point was that device manufacturers drop features from cheaper models because of costs. "This won't make a difference how many units we sell, drop it and we save $50 million!". Nokia does this all the time with their phones. From outside, it can appear as an artificial segmentation, but it rarely is.
> A camera on the touch would have probably [...] disrupted Apple's own iphone line.
I think that you answered you own question.