Gizmodo has picked up the question we raised last week, wondering “Why Apple is crippling the iPod touch?”

They note that “Apple has removed the ability to add events in the iPod touch’s calendar, even while it uses the same operating system and application frameworks as the iPhone.”

We’re wondering, if the iPod touch is like an iPhone without the phone, why doesn’t it have Google Maps, Stocks, Notes & Weather? It appears that Apple is artificially limiting the capabilities of the iPod touch in order to create artificial product segmentation, like it has done with its heavy-handed approach to ringtones.

If this is the case, it’s a reflection of the sorry state of competition in the portable media player market. Apple’s portable media players are so far ahead of most of its competition that the company is free to arbitrarily limit what you can do with their devices.