I don't think you remember that time period very well. The iTunes store wasn't launched until over a year AFTER the iPod!

The original iPod, chunky by today's standards was by far the smallest and easiest to use mp3 player that could carry more than a few hundred MB of data. At the time there wasn't any Windows support but I think 3rd party software became available if you had Firewire on your PC.

From Wikipedia: iPod

"The iPod line was announced by Apple on October 23, 2001, and released on November 10, 2001."

From Wikipedia: iTunes Store

"It opened on April 28, 2003, as the iTunes Music Store"

AFAICT, people weren't talking about the success of the iPod until 2004, and a bunch of people showing sales figures and historical analysis concur with that: the iPod was even described as "a flop" until the calendar year following the release of the iTunes Music Store. Of course, that also might not be causative: it was only in 2003 that they caved on supporting USB, and in 2004 they came out with the mini.

They didn't sell many iPods before iTunes came out. I think it's true that what drove the large numbers of iPod sales was probably iTunes, and the ability to legally download mp3s.

See iPod sales chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sale...

As someone else mentions Windows support was a big factor.

Pricing also was an issue, they were very expensive.

Another factor is that the market was smaller, Apple dominated the market very quickly (at least if you count the market as large capacity devices until they had the shuffle).

They also didn't sell many iPods before they added full support for Windows and for USB. I suspect that was a bigger driver of initial iPod sales than the iTunes music store.

The iTunes Music Store was probably a big reason why people upgraded to new iPods, though.