https://marco.org/2008/09/09/the-ipod-classic-is-rapidly-becoming-the-fruitcake
The iPod Classic is rapidly becoming the fruitcake that’s somehow always around at Christmas, yet few seem to want to eat. I give it one more year tops.
Despite how much the iPod Classic sucks, a certain subset of people will always buy it: the people who absolutely will not compromise on space and “need” to have their entire massive collections with them everywhere they go. Fortunately, most people are more sensible and this is a very small market.
Flash memory prices will eventually catch up and enable Apple to replace the Classic with a huge-capacity Touch (128 GB maybe), but that point is probably still 1-3 years off economically.