A few Apple-esk thoughts for the day. The new OS X operating system is being delayed until October this year although the iPhone is still on track. Patents point to Apple integrating the iPhone in a much closer way to the whole Apple (so-called) media experience (sounds almost like Microsoft, but those are my words). They are making a strong point that the iPhone will be released on time (late June in the US), and its fair to say a lot rides on a successful delivery.
To be honest the iPhone does have an entire industry’s worth of competition from the completely copied Chinese phone, to other touch phones like LG-Prada, to the usual Blackberries and upcoming innovation from Nokia, Sony with coop ventures by Google, Yahoo! and many others. Some have commented that the iPhone is definitely not multi-touch, but rather two-touch. But even so, what Apple excels at is a “quality release that we and our customers expect from us” with added benefits of their loyal user base, free press coverage on everything, brick and mortar flagship stores, Steve Jobs, and so on. The iPhone will be pricey, it will also be premium, and lets not doubt it will go mainstream similar to what the iPod Nano is to the original iPod. Take a look at the latest offer from iRiver to challenge the Nano or perhaps you’d just settle on a Sony Walkman W880 like I did with upto 8GB.
Apple TV is another extremely interesting platform. Granted competition here is equally bullish. Apple is late to the game, and they’re really testing waters with the current release and allowing a wide range of hacks to play with what they have made, adding features like RSS, games, breaking the iTunes DRM, working with Slingshot and so on. A common theme between the iPhone and Apple TV is that they both run modified versions of OS X – and thats pretty powerful. Sure Microsoft does this, but they get in your head by publicizing their wide range of novel OS titles, rather than just getting on with the job and making it work, most of the time mis-identifying their home-user customers as being their own developers. Pardon the slag on their employment of over 61,500 staff worldwide – high in talent, low on clear vision that spearheads innovation. I’d rather be at Google.
What I’d really like to make clear is while the world is oohing over the iPhone, I’m pretty sure that it will become integrated in a way that is much closer than any of us perceive today. Where the iPod has driven wider awareness and adoption of the already sleek and effective Apple Mac range of computers amongst home users and consumers of a wide scale, the iPhone will probably play a similar role especially within the business world, currently in bed with the Blackberry phone and its Windows counterparts.
In the meantime the iPod earlier this week overtook Sony’s original Walkman, Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Gameboy as the product with the highest sales over the shortest time, selling their 100 millionth iPod in just five and a half years. Apple’s stock is still hanging around $92, with one analyst pricing them at $200 per share, and if you have some spare cash, I still see it as a big opportunity for some longer term returns on investment.