Apple's Showtime impresses Wall Street

Clad in his informal self, black shirt and blue jeans, Steve Jobs the Obsessive Chief of Apple, Inc. staged the event. "Showtime" is an annual event when Apple releases their proprietary products and services to the public in a grand way. Their secrecy is well guarded, analysts speculate of possible innovations, and Wall Street awaits in high expectation. But time and again, Apple (AAPL) makes investors & consumers happy with its splendid releases! This year was no exception, only even better. For all you Macheads its Showtime long awaited for.

iPod Product Line Reincarnated. In the highly volatile and price sensitive market of mp3 players & mobile devices only 2 things matter - product upgrades or price cuts. What if offered you both! Yeah.."ultimate bang for the buck" or if neatly put - VALUE, & Apple did just that. They remastered the iPod product line with several features and reduced prices across the board.

The iPod has been beefed up with a higher capacity (80 GB), software addendum like alphabet scrolling (much needed! I had have been turning the wheel through time), gapless playback, games published by Apple / EA & longer battery life! The popular Nano, has been given a makeover with a neat aluminum casing, longer battery life, thinner physique, a higher capacity (8 GB) option, brightness control & a 21% price cut! That's the icing on the cake. The last on the line - iPod shuffle stunned, by being the smallest player available, with a clip to slip into your pocket, why? Because its too small to hold! All this at $79.

Apple is a true example of employing brand leveraging to maintain market share! No doubt that the next generation pods are going to be winners in sales.

There's one more thing. No. Its not done yet, iTunes 7.0 was released too with some updates. Beautiful ones! 3 types of views of the albums, with moving CD rack displays, gapless playback & the best of them all was the newly released video download service. Long awaited, Apple now provides Disney banners for $ 9.99 on the day of DVD releases. All this can be seamlessly synced into the iPods for mobile viewing. With this he closed the session leaving the audience contented and was about to leave when he said...

There is no better Communication than the message -
"Movies playing in an iPod near you"

And theres one more thing. This was clearly the winner for Apple. Nicked "iTV", Jobs introduced an Apple box with a few slots. iTV allows the TV in the living room to be wirelessly connected to the computer (Mac or PC! mind you..). Now that completes Apple's challenge of moving Digital Media to the living room. iTV is planned to hit the shelves Q1 2007 at $299. Jobs demonstrated iTV on the projector by playing "Pirates of the Caribbean" of high definition. iTV supports set top boxes and comes with a remote. So watch out before you invest on DVD players.. iTV could be better!

Late entrants into the market Microsoft announced its own mp3 player - Zune. Only pluses of Zune are larger screen and WiFi enabled to share music between Zunes. Entering so late in such a mature market requires a high degree of product differentiation, but that would drive up prices. Looks like MS does not stand a chance against Apple, maybe its fighting the Creatives and the Sandisks. Apple is the market leader and looks to hold onto that position for sometime.

Icing. Wall Street is happy. Investors + Consumers are happy. Stocks driven up by a few points. Apple is doing its job well or rather..Jobs is doing Apple well!

Watch the webcast of "Its Showtime" on apple.com