Despite all of the rumors and talk that Apple would officially pull the plug on the iPod Classic and the iPod Shuffle, the company has decided instead to continue to sell the devices at least though the holiday season. The fate for the two devices beyond that is unknown, but it is widely known that Apple has thought about discontinuing both devices. The news was confirmed at the end of an Apple-issued press release.

Neither the Classic nor the Shuffle were talked about during the Tuesday press event; instead, the focus was on the updated Nano with Multi-Touch support and the latest iPod Touch in both black and white that features iOS 5 support, as well as iCloud support.

The Shuffle will start at just $49, while the 160GB Classic will stay priced at $249. The move by Apple confirms the fact that the company still sees the iPod market as strong, despite the fact that many consumers are moving to multipurpose devices such as the iPhone. Apple claims that at least half of the purchases of iPods are by or for someone that has never previously owned an iPod.