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Apple Prepares For the Coming iPod Slump
Hugh Pickens writes "Companies like AOL have stagnated along with the products that made them successful as a mature market and downward pressure on prices led to a nasty death spiral, but Saul Hansell writes in the NY Times that Apple has used its amazing six-year run with the iPod to nurture other business lines. Even though the number of iPods sold this quarter grew only 1 percent from the same quarter a year ago, Apple should be able to sustain itself with three business lines that will help it withstand a collapse in the MP3-player market: a continuing revenue stream from the iPods that have already been sold because of the iTunes Store, product upgrades to the iPhone and iPod Touch that are so different that they may well appeal to a significant number of iPod users, and perhaps most significantly, sales of the Macintosh which showed an increase of 51 percent by units and 54 percent by dollars."
If the number of Mac units sold is accurate, then Vista is absolutely killing HP and Dell unit sales.
That would suggest that Dell and HP's consumer PC business will show unit and dollar sales declines.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
OTOH, Apple's been around for nearly a decade longer than Dell, and people have been predicting Apple's demise since before even Dvorak began his torrent of verbal excrement. And yet, Apple has managed to persevere and surprise all of us over and over again. You may not like Apple, but you can't deny that they know how to weather ups and downs. Steve Jobs seems especially good at getting people excited about even their mundane products. I think Dell should be looking at Apple.
Apple is pretty good at planning things but they are secretive so you don't know what they are planning. The iPhone was in development for 2 years before they announced it last January. And the only reason they announced it 6 months before they were able to sell it was that Apple had to apply for a FCC license on it.
Over 10 years ago, Apple bought NeXT to save themselves. Some analysts couldn't understand why Apple with it's faltering personal computer product line would buy a Unix computer company whose product line wasn't very successful. Was Apple going to start selling 2 product lines? What few understood was Apple bought NeXT for their OS expertise not their hardware business. That expertise became OS X.
Just yesterday, Apple bought PA Semi. This slump might be something that planned for a long time and PA Semi is just the start. We don't know what Apple has in store for PA Semi if NeXT is a good example.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
While I don't own a Mac Book Pro, and I haven't looked at its specs
when I first saw those commercials, I immediately though Wow!!! I remember ads for laptops and luggables in the late 80's/early 90's -- they didn't fit in no inter-office envelope.
I know someone a few years ago who bought himself an Apple laptop, because he was frustrated with his Windows laptop work provided. He seemed to think it was well worth the money, as it just worked.
I honestly can't say if it's a lot of hype and hot air or not
I guess it's all a matter of what you want and need.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Apple could likely make just as much money with a slower rate of new products coming out. However, that would make it far easier for competitors to catch up.
Microsoft's second generation Zune, had it arrived a year earlier, would have been competitive hardware wise with the then current iPods. As it was, Apple's rapid upgrading left it looking like nothing special.
The old Apple of the late 80s basically stopped the frantic pace of upgrades, and that's exactly what allowed Microsoft to catch up over a ten year period from 1985-1995. The bumper sticker that said "Windows 95 = Mac 89" was funny, but the sad part was that Mac 89 wasn't so far behind Mac 95.
Now the tables are turned, and Microsoft is the one coasting along on past performance, allowing Apple to catch up and surpass it.
Windows Vista, 7, and Singularity: The New Copland, Gershwin, Taligent
>I'm not even confined to one vendor for application and use.
Spoken as the non-iPod owner you are. Buy music from Amazon and put it in the iPod? How about free podcasts? Audible.com? Transcode your own movies? Download mp4s from bittorrent and play them in your Touch/iPod video? Free apps for jailbroken iPhones/iTouches? All of the above work for me, zero worries. Notice how I can fill my iPod to the brim without even mentioning the iTunes store?
And then, I still that option if I want to exercise it to get commercial music, latest movies an option that you certainly don't have. It might be "absurdly high" for you, it's absurdly convenient for me.