On Wednesday this week Apple is holding an event where attendants will see once again how the company’s profits are getting more dependent on different devices other than PC. The Cupertino will show its new iPod Touch with a camera for video chatting and a revamped Apple TV set-top box that will reportedly resemble an iPhone 4.
As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle “while the event will dazzle with hardware, it could prove to be an important showcase highlighting how iOS, Apple’s 3-year-old mobile operating system, is reshaping the company into a post-PC leader.”
Many of us have already heard the rumors that Apple redesigned Apple TV with iOS. If that happens, it will represent a beachhead for iOS across all of Apple’s significant non-Mac hardware products.
“I think the iOS operating system is so powerful for Apple, it’s generating most of their revenues, between the iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, iTunes and the App Store,” said independent mobile analyst Brian Hall. “Clearly, I think Apple realizes that they want to continue down this path.”
Observers believe that the Mac computer won’t remain an exclusion. Last week, an Apple patent application showed a touch-screen Mac that could switch between Mac OS X and iOS. The Cupertino has built its name on computers but it gets clear that the shape of the business is changing and its newest operating system is enabling Apple to pursue a strategy that ties an expanding number of lightweight devices to iOS.
Indeed, the numbers show just how valuable iOS, combined with Apple’s iTunes and App Store content-delivery system, has become for the company. In the quarter before the iPhone was released in June 2007, Macs represented 43 percent of revenue, followed by iPods at 32 percent.
Fast-forward to the most recent quarter: The iPhone and iPad, devices that didn’t exist until a little more than three years ago, now represent 48 percent of revenue while Mac computers account for only 28 percent of Apple’s sales. The iPod now contributes 10 percent of revenue, led by the iOS-based iPod Touch, the most profitable of the devices.
Brian Marshall, an analyst with investment firm Gleacher & Co., predicts that Apple will have sold 200 million iOS devices by this time next year. He expects the iPhone and iPad to represent 68 percent of gross margins for 2010.
Source:http://ecommerce-journal.com/node/29494
