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Mobile Phone - Convergence Point For iPod, Others?
Nagen writes "DrunkenBlog has an intriguing essay arguing that the mobile phone is the primary convergence point for digital devices and will soon cause iPod sales to evaporate. Perhaps more interesting is the idea that the iPod is an expendable pawn in a larger battle of who will control the gateway of all legal content to the user."
Sad news. Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs is dying of pancreatic cancer. According to a hospital spokesman, this is one of the most devastating forms of cancer, with survival after diagnosis usually limited to one year at most. Even if you don't like homosexual computers and one button mice, there's no denying Steve "Rim" Jobs was an American icon. He will be missed.
I'll do you one better.
In "The Village", the creatures are not real. They are costumes worn by the "elders" to scare people from leaving the villiage and realizing that the year is sometime in the 1990's and their is technology. In the end, "Ivy" kills her brother who is wearing a creature costume.
Jason Bourne's girlfriend is killed in the Bourne Supremacy, she is mistakenly shot by someone doing shady business with the CIA big-boys. Bourne only kills who is necessary, and not for revenge, instead he manages to tape a confession by the higher-ups, and the main shady CIA agent kills himself. Bourne goes into hiding alone for good at the end of the movie.
YHBT, HAND.
Apple Computer, Inc. (AAPL), beset by angry creditors and faced with severe G5 production problems, is on the verge of bankruptcy and total collapse. Apple continues to nosedive into oblivion, as confirmed by industry watchers, investors, and, most painfully, by customers themselves.
As a recent study by Bank of America Securities puts it, Apple ekes out its small existence by peddling new hardware to its existing customers; once those customers are satisfied, Apple will run out of steam . If these disastrous financial forecasts aren't enough, one need only look to Netcraft for confirmation that Apple's market share among Web servers is slowly dwindling down to zero. The market share of Mac OS X is now eclipsed even by that of FreeBSD, another OS that is deeply imperiled.
But the abysmal server presence of OS X is the least of Apple's worries. Apple's most recent quarterly report indicates a death spiral of cash loss. Indeed, Apple has hemorrhaged some $276 million in the last quarter, while racking up a dizzying $2.4 billion in debt. Revenue from sales of the iPod, the portable music player that is barely keeping Apple afloat in this shipwreck of fiscal woe, declined dramatically, threatening to shrink further an already miniscule lifeline.
Likewise, sales of the eMac, iMac and Power Macintosh G5 lines continue to skid. Apple is unable to secure G5 processors in sufficient numbers to supply its customers with Power Macintosh G5 and iMac computers, as Steve Jobs himself recently admitted, sending Apple stock into a deadly tailspin. The staggering decline in sales numbers confirms it: there is no doubt that one-time Apple customers, dismayed with the floundering ineptitude of their favorite company, have begun turning away in droves, seeking cheaper, faster hardware from manufacturers such as Dell.
Apple teeters on the precipice of doom, one step away from plummeting to its ultimate nadir of bankruptcy, chaos, and implosion. And with the recent news that Steve Jobs has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the forthcoming leadership vacuum and low morale at Apple will only hasten the inevitable. Wise investors will quickly dump AAPL stock and abandon the doomed company, now less than one year away from complete disintegration.
It's time to move to a new platform: Apple is dead.