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With the signature white headphone wires dangling from his ears, Evin Williams doesn't hesitate to say he's listening to an iPod when someone asks.

As he pulls the electronic device from his pocket, it's clear, however, that he actually owns a SanDisk. Williams says his mother mistakenly purchased it for his Christmas gift after assuming all portable music players were iPods.

" 'IPod' is like a slang term for all MP3 players now anyway," offers the 15-year-old Williams, a high school sophomore in Denver. "They are so popular, and everybody wants it now. I wanted one, too."

Apple's iPod has become a status symbol, a statement of current cool, trend watchers say — the same way devotees covet, and boast about, anything Prada, the luxury of a Hummer or the retro hipness of Converse All-Stars.

Teens consider iPods a must-have the way cell phones and CD players once were. And hip adults view the device as an accessory that broadcasts their youthfulness.

More than half of U.S. households have one or more of the different models. IPod has consistently remained one of the most-wanted MP3 players, although arguably better brands with more features exist.

"The iPod is the perfect blend of fashion and technology, which plays directly into image and status," says Bob Lang, president of Avanquest Software USA, based in Westminster, Colo.

For Williams and other teens, owning an iPod means gaining peer acceptance and feeling connected by sharing the same technology, says Denver psychologist Maximillian Wachtel.

"Because of the importance that's placed on popular culture and music in adolescence, (the iPod) is seen as a requirement for them," Wachtel says. "It's ubiquitous to teen culture, and it's seen as an extreme lack of status if they don't have one."

Half the students senior Jeremy Sanders, 18, sees with iPods at Denver's George Washington High School aren't even listening to them, he says. They just stroll with one clipped to their hips so everyone can see it.

Out of the nine class periods that make up his day, Eugene Doherty, 15, has his iPod for about four of them.

He regularly lets his close buddies borrow the 30GB iPod he saved up for and bought four months ago. He doesn't even know exactly what songs or videos he has. His friends are constantly downloading new content.

Wachtel says Doherty is the surveyor of his universe whether he knows it (which is highly likely) or not. "Think about what this kid has — to be able to grace his friends with the use of an iPod for a period," Wachtel says. "That's gotta be a good feeling."

Issues of power and control associated with having a lifestyle brand item like an iPod get stronger and take on a different meaning for adults.

If a person always has the next big thing, he or she demonstrates that they have control over their environment, Wachtel says. It's important for the world to know what they can afford, and that power translates into the ability to stave off mortality in a figurative sense.

"If you have an iPod when you are 50, you are perceived as having more vitality, young at heart and hip to popular cultural trends," he says.

Experts also say the iPod has become a cultural phenomenon because society deemed it so. For example, society takes on a created concept, such as an iPod or a brand of soda like Coke, and gives it power by choosing to use and be identified with it. Different versions of the product are made so that it fits seamlessly into a chosen lifestyle or budget. And before long, each MP3 player becomes synonymous with the iPod.