| Monday, October 31, 2005 |
13:01 - We Make a Market in This Issue
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/oct/31itms.html
|
(top)  |
I guess the Steve has this to say to the doubters:
CUPERTINO, California—October 31, 2005—Apple® today announced that iTunes® Music Store customers have purchased and downloaded more than one million videos since they debuted on October 12. Customers can choose from over 2,000 music videos, Pixar short films and hit TV shows for just $1.99. Top downloads include music videos from Michael Jackson, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West; Pixar’s “For the Birds” and “Boundin’”; and episodes of ABC’s hit TV shows “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives.”
“Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.”
Broaden the content offerings? What? You mean five shows isn't enough to hold us?
Still, with that small a content selection, plus of course all those music videos, to reach a million downloads this quickly (at $2 a pop) is certainly no small potatoes. It's pretty clear now that this video venture has up till now been just a testing of the waters, a low-risk minor extension of the technology to see how things sold. True, the video iPod is no slouch of a technical leap, but even if video downloads had proved to be a bomb, at least it would mean they would still have a much nicer and more symmetrical iPod product lineup than the old, confused "iPod/iPod photo/iPod mini/iPod shuffle" agglomeration. This success just validates the idea and gives Apple the go-ahead to build on it. And there's nowhere to go but up. Damien Del Russo writes:
This is going to be big! You might think about putting some amount long in AAPL stock. They are up 67% after more than doubling last year, and their products have a lot of growth to go. Companies like Tivo have got to be quaking in their boots if Apple is muscling into television shows with a completely new viewing model. It's certainly an aggressive play but they have shown the ability to monetize music better than anyone, and monetizing television could be just massive. It's not even about the video iPod - that's more of a bonus. Being able to legally download television to your computer is pretty cool and definitely worth $2 per episode.
I've got some AAPL that I bought at $63. Today the stock is at $57, and that's after a split. The value has almost doubled in the past year. But I ain't selling.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
