Apple Now Third-largest U.S. Music Retailer

Apple Inc.'s digital music store iTunes is now the third-largest music retailer in the United States with 10 percent market share, overtaking Amazon.com in the first quarter, according to a survey released on Friday.

The NPD Group report highlights the growing strength of digital music in the U.S. market as physical sales of compact discs continue to slide.

Apple's iTunes is third behind market leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with a 15.8 percent share, and Best Buy Co Inc. with a 13.8 percent share, according to the survey of 40,000 people aged 13 and older.

Both of those retailers mostly sell music in the CD format. Online store bestbuy.com has a 1.1 percent market share with sales of both CDs and digital music.

Amazon.com Inc. dropped to fourth with a 6.7 percent share. Its sales increased but not as fast as rivals.More>>

Apple's iPhone casts big shadow on cell industry

If the device—a melding of phone, Web browser and music and video player—is a hit, analysts say it will cut into market share of major phonemakers, including Schaumburg-based Motorola

As if struggling cell phone-maker Motorola Inc. doesn't have enough to worry about: Here comes the iPhone, heir to the mighty iPod, brainchild of tech golden boy Steve Jobs—and riding a tidal wave of hype to boot.

Due in U.S. stores Friday, the iPhone promises to stir up the mobile phone business. Apple Inc.'s first phone isn't expected to take much business from Schaumburg-based Motorola or anyone else in the short term, but it will change the industry landscape nonetheless, analysts say.

"It will not be a financial disrupter, but it will be a psychological disrupter, a research and development disrupter," said Roger Entner, senior vice president of IAG Research's communications sector. "That's because everybody will say [to competitors like Motorola], 'Why can't you do that?' " More>>

iPhone set to ring up strong results for Apple

NO CONSUMER device has stirred the worldwide interest to match Apple's iPhone, due to go on sale in the US on June 29.

Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox 360 pale beside it. Even the phenomenally successful iPod did not gain celebrity status for at least a year after it was launched in October 2001.

To judge by the furore, iPhone is the most desired device on the planet, even though its $US500 ($A590) price tag is about five times more than average US mobile phone prices.

Even in Australia, which is not expected to see the iPhone on sale until late next year or early 2009, interest is keen.

A lot of iPod technology and design is in the iPhone, which may account for the fever of interest surrounding it because in the music-player market it is most desired, works well and is seen as a symbol of coolness.

The fact that Apple has not until now ventured into the highly competitive mobile phone market and, in that sense has no experience in this area, has no bearing on the issue; nor that Apple expects to sell only 10 million iPhones where Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola each probably will sell 300 million of their phones this year.

Expectations of success have galvanised US sharemarkets and Apple's stock is now at a high of $US127, having stacked on more than $US25 in the past month.

Gene Munster, of US analyst firm, Piper Jaffray, says Apple's share price could go to $US160 and that, with European sales beginning at the end of next year, the company will sell 45 million iPhones in 2009.

So what makes the iPhone so sexy?

It is a highly innovative touch-screen mobile phone, media player and wireless internet gadget using 802.11g technology, otherwise called wi-fi and available in thousands of areas all over the world.

Other phones have similar features, but none have quite the finesse of the iPhone. Even the touch-screen is different, and the device uses the Macintosh computer operating system.

It is beautiful to see and great fun to use. I have had one in my hand and made a call on it; to Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO (but he did not answer).

Munster estimates iPhone's price will halve in a year and then capture about 7 per cent of the North American handset market and about 3 per cent of the world mobile phone market.

Motorola's RAZR phone, one of the most popular of recent models, sold 65 million in 12 months after its launch in 2004.

Other analysts, including Jonathan Hoopes, of ThinkEquity Partners, points to the sales curve of the iPod. It sold 187,000 units in its first six months, from October 2001 to April 2002. It did nearly half a million in the next 12 months and 2.18 million the following year. Apple expects to ship 40 million iPhones in 2009.

Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin expects Apple will continue to develop the iPhone, expanding its memory from 4 gigabyte and adding other technology, including, possibly, WiMAX that would improve wireless internet access.

The other sales-promoting aspect is that the iPhone incorporates what amounts to an iPod nano. Thus, if you add the cost of a mobile to the cost of an iPod, you get roughly the price of an iPhone, plus internet access.

Apple and Google - Partnership Next Week?

With Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC) on schedule for next week, this is the time for rumors to come flying. The latest one and highly-probable one: Apple and Google partnering up on updating Apple’s .Mac service.

Apple’s .Mac service provides consumers with one gigabyte of shared email/web storage that users can back their own documents up to and also host websites on. They also provide online calendar, synchronizing of bookmarks to multiple computers, and more, for $99/year. While this is all put on by Apple and seems like a good round-up features, Google, the search-engine giant, has most, if not all of these features for free and are in some cases better than what Apple currently provides. Google’s GMail service provides users with a continuously growing amount of storage space for their email, as well as Google PageBuilder to create your own site on, Google Calendar, and many other features that Apple provides.

Apple has been bashed for not updating these features to catch up with competitors, but that may change. Wired is reporting that Apple and Google may partner up with each other to update the .Mac service to make it more comparable to other solutions. In an interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and also an Apple board member, he believed that this was bound to happen. “We’re a perfect back end to the problems that they’re trying to solve. They have very good judgment on user interface and people. But they don’t have this supercomputer (that Google has), which is the data centers. What they have is a manufacturing business that’s doing quite well.”

This could be a hint to an upcoming re-release of the .Mac service. Also, when Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, was asked at the D Conference last week, he said that they “will make up for lost time in the very near future” for their putting off .Mac upgrade. We will see how this all folds out on Monday, June 11 at the WWDC keynote speech.

iPhone set to ring up strong results for Apple

NO CONSUMER device has stirred the worldwide interest to match Apple's iPhone, due to go on sale in the US on June 29.

Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox 360 pale beside it. Even the phenomenally successful iPod did not gain celebrity status for at least a year after it was launched in October 2001.

To judge by the furore, iPhone is the most desired device on the planet, even though its $US500 ($A590) price tag is about five times more than average US mobile phone prices.

Even in Australia, which is not expected to see the iPhone on sale until late next year or early 2009, interest is keen.

A lot of iPod technology and design is in the iPhone, which may account for the fever of interest surrounding it because in the music-player market it is most desired, works well and is seen as a symbol of coolness.

The fact that Apple has not until now ventured into the highly competitive mobile phone market and, in that sense has no experience in this area, has no bearing on the issue; nor that Apple expects to sell only 10 million iPhones where Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola each probably will sell 300 million of their phones this year.

Expectations of success have galvanised US sharemarkets and Apple's stock is now at a high of $US127, having stacked on more than $US25 in the past month.

Gene Munster, of US analyst firm, Piper Jaffray, says Apple's share price could go to $US160 and that, with European sales beginning at the end of next year, the company will sell 45 million iPhones in 2009.

So what makes the iPhone so sexy?

It is a highly innovative touch-screen mobile phone, media player and wireless internet gadget using 802.11g technology, otherwise called wi-fi and available in thousands of areas all over the world.

Other phones have similar features, but none have quite the finesse of the iPhone. Even the touch-screen is different, and the device uses the Macintosh computer operating system.

It is beautiful to see and great fun to use. I have had one in my hand and made a call on it; to Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO (but he did not answer).

Munster estimates iPhone's price will halve in a year and then capture about 7 per cent of the North American handset market and about 3 per cent of the world mobile phone market.

Motorola's RAZR phone, one of the most popular of recent models, sold 65 million in 12 months after its launch in 2004.

Other analysts, including Jonathan Hoopes, of ThinkEquity Partners, points to the sales curve of the iPod. It sold 187,000 units in its first six months, from October 2001 to April 2002. It did nearly half a million in the next 12 months and 2.18 million the following year. Apple expects to ship 40 million iPhones in 2009.

Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin expects Apple will continue to develop the iPhone, expanding its memory from 4 gigabyte and adding other technology, including, possibly, WiMAX that would improve wireless internet access.

The other sales-promoting aspect is that the iPhone incorporates what amounts to an iPod nano. Thus, if you add the cost of a mobile to the cost of an iPod, you get roughly the price of an iPhone, plus internet access.