Apple, for the third year in running has started its promotional offer called back-to-school. They are offering discounts up to 199 US dollars for iPod touch or any other iPod which is bought along with a Mac. This offer is exclusively open for teachers, students, staff members and even parents. There will get discounts between the range of $79 and $199.

The maximum discount of $199 is equivalent to the price of Apple’s low-end iPod touch with 8GB memory. Apple also has phones which look pretty much like iPhone and are available for $299 and $399.

This promotion is primarily is repeat of the last two years refunds. In the first year Apple offered discounts up to $299 and last year the maximum discount offered was $229. The iPod touch is a highly successful phone and during the first quarter of this year its sales grew by 63% with regard to last year’s first quarter sales.

This robust growth of iPod touch has resulted in an overall increase in revenue of iPod by 12% which is by far the best performance in last two years. Although there are many who believe that the iPad will hamper the success story of iPod, Apple denies any such trends.

Apple has made it very clear that there was no impact on iPods sales after the launch of the iPad, but the thing is the iPads were made available in market in April and the results were for the first quarter. So, it isn’t very clear how the iPad will impact the market for iPod but Apple is optimistic about iPod.