“For Apple, the question is how much longer will its Golden Age last? After being dismissed as a computer industry has-been, Apple is once more the icon of innovation. CEO Steven P. Jobs has breathed new life into the company with a snazzy line of iPod music players. Some 16 million have been sold so far, creating a halo effect for Apple’s Macintosh computers. The combination has boosted Apple’s sales 72%, to $6.7 billion, in the past two quarters, from the same period a year ago. Profits have risen even faster, up 436%, to $585 million,” BusinessWeek writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Notables include Google at #4, Dell #7, Acer #22, Microsoft #27, Motorola #40, and Intel #52.
LOL It’s only just beginning… About one decade too early to start asking when it will finish..!!
check back next year (or whenever they do this list again) and i bet apple will be at the top.
MW “entire”-apple will rule the entire list!!
And why is it that Apple attracts the interminable “when will it end” scenarios? The question is not asked of any names above or those immediately below it in the list. Why do they always insist on iPod killers et al coming along knock Apple down? Is it the curse of it losing to Windows? It must be explainable but I find it irritating as hell!
.Mac is down. Maybe we’re about to find out that Apple has “Ended”.
It’s just part of our culture now (and for the last 20 years) to want Apple to die. Likely, it will always be that way. Though Apple’s been healthy for a while, and is at present the darling of the digital world, and will probably be around for a long, long time, critics and analysts only know to replay the tapes in their heads and approach the company with the tech-age lore and mythology that has made Apple the pretty-boy punching bag of the industry.
Long live Apple.
Back up now, and.. nope, they’re still there.
It hasn’t even STARTED yet. It won’t start until Macs go Intel. THEN we’re talking golden age!
Golden Age begins with the iTunes Video Store. The rest is all just the simple process of putting that in every living room in America and ending television as we know it.
MW: movement, hahahahaha!
What blows my mind is that the article questions if Apple will be able to sustain the iPod success, since so many music fans (16 million) have jumped on board an purchased an iPod already.
Does this strike anyone else as freaking insane? What logic is it that out of the Billions of humans, only 16 million are interested in an iPod to play their music? It isn’t like what mobile phone sales hit 16 million the market was saturated!
My best friend saddended me last night when he said it isn’t a good time to be long in AAPL (investor speak for not a good time to buy or hold Apple stock). He had the same back assward reasoning that iTunes success won’t continue and the iPod is slowing in sales. With 82% market share it is true that Apple will never double their digital music sales (because there is only 18% of the market remaining) but it is a pretty strong foothold they have and it is strengthened with the iPod/iTMS chicken/egg lockin.
As an AAPL share holder, I am happy with the returns I have seen and look forward to growth from the Intel move.
Me,
Re “With 82% market share it is true that Apple will never double their digital music sales (because there is only 18% of the market remaining)“
This doesn’t compute. That would only be true if the market were saturated, which as you explained is “freaking insane.” It merely means that for Apple to double its digital music sales, the size of the market would have to nearly double. Granted, that’s unlikely. But they can certainly grow by more than 18%!
Just remember that it is 82% of the people with mp3 players not 82% of all possible individuals.
Quick & dirty: 16 million (iPods) ÷ 19.5 million (users of mp3 playback devices) = 82% of playback market. (I don’t know how accurate the sales figures are, just using what is being bandied about in the threads.) With all those computer users out there that still don’t do digital music, there’s plenty of market to go after.
As long as Apple can continue to get the same ratio of first-time buyer sales, or better, and continued return buyers, then they will be in great shape. Who know, the halo effect might boomerang back on the iPod and drive UP the percentage.
How long has it been since the Apple death knell counter has ticked up? Quite a while I think.
Nowadays the flavor of the week for rampant speculation at the wild end of the spectrum has to do with them selling out or perhaps going the microsoft route and licensing out OS X for use with any PC. Before that it was Apple getting out of computers and just selling hardware or Apple getting out of computers and just selling consumer electronics.
Apple is so far ahead of the game and thinks so far outside the box it seems like almost anything is possible. All we can do is expect the unexpected I guess.
What you all fail to realize is that iPod sales not computer sales are what has vaulted Apple into the #6 spot. I ask all of you Macaphiles, net of iPod sales, what has Apple done that is so truly revolutionary in the computer business? The accomplishments I can think of involve only putting a fancy front-end on top of NetBSD, shinny silver laptops and finally coming to grips with the notion that to survive they must abandon their foolish relience on IBM, which truly exited the PC business in 1987 to focus on higher-end IT services.
Apple today reminds me of the Compaq, the Juniper Networks, the Genuity and the Data General of five years ago. Companies whose products were all flash and no sizzle. It is appropiate that Apple only now moves to the Intel x86 platform at a time when Intel is becoming as insignificant to the future of computing as IBM is today.
Longhorn is the future of personal computing. Microsoft, through its vertical intergration with desktop manufacturers and software developers will once again own the desktop space with a product that is secure, virus-free and capable of fully exploiting the x86 platform.
:~P
Sum yung gai I think what Me meant was that they can’t double their PERCENTAGE of the market. That is not to say they they can’t double sales. I am sure they will in fact.
PC Kid, been hangin’ with stantheman and sputnik haven’t you? I’m tellin’ you, Kid: Hang with them people too long and you’ll rot your brain. Better off hangin’ with the Stoners under the bleachers at the high school football field. Relax. Go get a pail or bucket or deep dishpan. Fill it with water of a comfortable temperature. Pull up a chair before it and, bending over slowly, carefully, in the manner of someone dunking for apples at Halloween in the old days, immerse your head in the water, right up to the neck, and hold it there for a good, long soaking – as long as you can hold your breath. Then, come up for air. Breathe deep and repeat as often as necessary to get these absurd thoughts out of your head.
PC Kid,
Aliens have landed. Your ride is here.
“Longhorn is the future of personal computing.”
Are you kidding. If anything, Longhorn will be the ghost of computing’s past. Literally! No one gives a rats a** about Longhorn (especially Microsoft) as it’s merely shaping up to be a minor upgrade to XP. And folks in IT are dreading the thought of it.
Microsoft’s version of “vertical integration” requires bending over and taking up the tookus. Strangely enough “the real IT world” (as Sputnik points out) doesn’t seem to mind.
Dear oh dear pc kid. Just go and buy a copy of Time magazine and lok at the Apple ad and you’ll see what the top commentators say about Windows. Its in the dust, on the floor, going no-where, depressingly un-useable and what is worse, it simply won’t change. Not with Longhorn anyway. Ms need to start their OS from scratch – with Unix. OR license OSX!
PC Kid writes: “Longhorn is the future of personal computing.” Yeah, sure. The far distant future.
Don’t hold your breath, and don’t get your hopes up.
To PC KID,
Would the future of the desktop by Microsoft, by means of Longhorn be similiar to when Bill Gates was asking Apple to release the interface so he could develop it on the PC? Then later got it via contract with a flaw that allows him to use Apple’s desktop on Wintel boxes to this day. Are we to assume that Longhorn will again copy the Apple interface to aquire market dominance since it can not do so without Apple’s research/development?
Would it be fair to say that by Apple going to the PowerPC that used RISC also sparked a marked increase in R&D by the other chip makers, such as, Intel could no longer stand still as the competation heated up.
Would it be fair to say that USB had very little movement until apple used it to replace all the other ports and cause a huge movement to USB?
Would it be fair to say that Apple is really only to worry about the adoptation of its innovation by other companies some time after it has the market moving…..say music. Which was on the ropes.
There is sssooooo much more if you do history…..
PC KID….what I see is your love for Microsoft, because it was developed on the Apple first…..So with a little time and you will get your wish. Once again you will be some years behind the Apple crowd as Redmond figures out how to put it out under a Windows name.
Don’t worry, we will adopt first-the best, even when we change hardware and fine tune it so the rest of you can enjoy it some time later.
Done on an Macintosh with 0 virus, 0 spyware, 0 adware, 0 data loss, 0 time down, 0 problems for 6 years, 0 tech calls, and 100 percent love for a computer that takes care of its owner……damn the grass is really lush on this side-come on over and try it: Mooooooooooo.
Done with Love!
PC Kid:
Longhorn..you mean Windows XP SP3?
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You know that they took all of the potentially cool stuff out of Longwait to get it to market “in a timely matter”…
Moo.
To PC Kid
It is Human Nature to fear the unknown. But Apple has made it easy to know the Tiger. you have nothing to be afraid of. Just visit Apples Web Site (http://www.apple.com) and click the Mac OS X Tab. There you will see the Tiger is a Beautiful and Powerful OS that just wants to be loved, and will Love you back! Don’t be afraid. You might like it soo much that one day you might grow up to be a Fearless Tiger Man.
Good Luck on your Journey and remember the Apple Elders are always here to help guide you.
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