There is Something There at AppleTV

Posted on March 15, 2010

 
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Phil Leigh

Phil Leigh

Tim Cook, who is Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, was recently interviewed at a Goldman, Sachs investor conference. He repeatedly minimized the company’s market opportunity in the Digital Living Room of the Future. Instead he implied that portable devices would be the prime growth engines in the years ahead.

For example, he commented that Apple has “no interest” in the TV market and that “AppleTV” remains a hobby because the market size is small by comparison to that for portable units. In contrast he observed that the “vast majority of Apple’s revenue now comes from mobile devices and content purchased for those devices.” Read more…

The Future of Apple

Posted on February 20, 2010

 
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The Need:

Since the turn of the century Apple evolved from a secondary computer company into the most potent force transforming media. It is the premier Digital Media innovator as evidenced by the iPod, iPhone and most recently the iPad. Basically each introduction defined a new product category or enabled an incipient one to “cross the chasm” into mass market acceptance. More of the same is expected in the future, not only from products but also from transactional services.

Most any business affected by the future of media will be directly impacted by Apple’s future innovations. Moreover, its existing product lines alone will carry the company past the $100 billion revenue threshold in less than five years.

Revenue Forecast - Percent Sales by Product Line

Revenue Forecast - Percent Sales by Product Line

Read more…

Rewriting Apple’s History

Posted on February 6, 2010

 
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Video Insider Logo

Video Insider Logo

As Mark Twain put it, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest don’t happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Normally the winners write history, but Apple’s success and lofty stock price has given a number of media executives a bad case of P/E envy. They’re distorting the past by accusing Apple of dictating terms of media consumption on the Internet.

For example, when Apple convinced the recorded music industry to sell digital downloads in 2003 it allocated seventy percent of the sales proceeds to the record labels and music publishers. One might suppose a business partner would be happy with a 70% share of incremental revenues, especially when that partner incurs almost no added cost. Perhaps they actually were smugly pleased with the deal originally. Maybe they figured Apple had been suckered into giving them more than twice as much as it kept for itself. Read more…

Inventing the Future at Apple

Posted on January 30, 2010

 
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Phil Leigh

Phil Leigh

As Xerox PARC pioneer Alan Kay once put it, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. Much like it did with the iPod and iPhone, Apple again invented the future when it introduced the iPad tablet computer in January.

From one perspective the iPad is an evolutionary extension of the iPod Touch. It uses the same operating system and user interface. Consumers familiar with the iPod Touch will quickly get the hang of the iPad. Neither device has a hard drive, or unpacks out of the box with a keyboard. Both can use the approximate 140,000 apps available at the Apps Store. The most obvious difference is the iPad screen which is about seven times larger. Read more…