Noted analyst Gene Munster (of Piper Jaffray) predicts that Apple has a gap to fill between the iPod touch and the MacBook, that gap evidently being the yet-non-confirmed Mac tablet. The device would be priced between the $500-700 range, but wouldn't see the light of day until FY 2010, due to the complexity of the OS it would require.
It appears that Amazon.com's pricing model for electronic books - just under $10 - is on its way to becoming the norm. Barnes & Noble, on its eReader site, is now offering digital versions of New York Times bestsellers for $9.95, just a hair cheaper than Amazon's standard $9.99 for such books. The downward pressure on e-book pricing has rattled many book publishers.
As Fast Company wrote recently, Amazon with e-books is following the strategy of Apple with digital music, creating a "sticky price in consumers' minds" that, once established, is difficult to dislodge - and gives Amazon more leverage in negotiations with publishers.
...a larger-form factor device would offer Boomers a bigger viewing screen and “lifestyle” settings, like fatter keys and a more forgiving keyboard to ease input, and wizard-like shortcuts to simplify recurring tasks.
This is key, because with the onset of age, Boomers’ motor skills have become less precise; their vision has become poorer; and their eyes get tired easier.
As such, the premise of them plugging away on tiny keys and peering into the tiny screen of a mobile device like iPhone/iPod touch is a non-starter.
By contrast, the Boomer Tablet offers a superior input, viewing and playback environment for accessing your iTunes library, personal media, syndicated content services, iPhone Apps and presumably, Mac Apps; something that the 70M+ Baby Boomers in the US who are aged 53-73 would likely find compelling.
Apple's iPhone and iTunes and Amazon's Kindle are onto something very big.
Their approach to making the digital future financially viable represents as much of a psychological break with rampant free content practices as a template for conditioning consumers to pay for relevant content and valuable applications, especially for mobile devices.
Just as important, they dodge reliance on media advertising that will remain in flux as it evolves into interactive marketing and e-commerce. By 2012, the growth of user payments for applications and content will likely outstrip the growth of online advertising (at twice the rate, or an average annual 17%). Although user payments will remain just under 60% of total U.S. offline media, it will top 30% of online media spending in 2012, which advertising will continue to dominate.
This week, European streaming music service Spotify demonstrated its Android app, which features on-demand streams of songs the user doesn’t own, as well as an offline synchronization and caching function that allows a listener to enjoy a song on the go, regardless of whether the phone is connected to a data network at that moment. That’s dangerously close to owning a song, and speculation is already rife that Apple won’t accept Spotify’s planned iPhone app because it’s too much of a threat to Apple’s iTunes music store.
The world and his dog, it would seem, want Apple to make a netbook. Even that part of the world that has no idea what a netbook is wants Apple to make one.
Amazon.com Inc. plans to release a program Wednesday for reading electronic books on Apple Inc.'s iPhone, extending Amazon's sales of digital books to devices beyond its Kindle e-book reader.
Amazon's software application, which can be downloaded free of charge, allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to read books or periodicals purchased on the Web or through their dedicated Kindle device, usually for $9.99. Using a service that Amazon calls whispersync, the program keeps track of a readers' latest page in any given book across both a Kindle and iPhone.
"There are times when you're going to be in a place where you happen to have your iPhone but not your Kindle," said Ian Freed, an Amazon vice president. "If I get stuck in line at the grocery store, I can pick up where I was reading with my iPhone."
"The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one," he says. "Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while.
"It's kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap and they are not selling as much."
Mr Wozniak even speaks out against the iPhone 3G, Apple's latest cult product which caused pandemonium in the West End when it was launched in Apple's Regent Street store this summer.
"Consumers aren't getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down," he says when comparing the iPhone's closed operating system to the new Google phone's open source system which allows anyone to modify and adapt the way the phone works. "I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed," he laments.
