re 70s
I think aTV is a competitor to the Airport Express, which isn't from what I hear a big top-line item at Apple. The cool part will be putting the UI on the HDTV; driving it from the computer was a drag. Using it with multiple computers is also cool.
Comparing the price and the likely volumes, I don't see it replacing a lot of vPod sales. Also: is calendar 1Q a big vPod quarter? Is there anything in the quarter last year that makes it a hard number to match? It's not like there's reason to think iPods will be on fire this quarter, but the vPod isn't really competing with the iPod just yet.
Why not? iPod has 8GB storage, minus the OS, no? vPod is something like 60, no? I can carry everything I've encoded, plus some backup data, plus a photo album to watch while I'm away from my girls. iPhone isn't capable of holding a bunch of movies or a big music collection; it's a phone that can also browse and play songs and so on, but it's not huge on memory. The memory limit will reduce its competition with iPods other than the ones that are Flash based.
This raises the question: what will iPhone to to the sale of the Nano? I'd say the iPhone announcement could really hurt the Nano, which as I understand it is where the sales are. Whoops. Osborne effect? Time will tell.
On the other hand, a big bonus of the Nano is its price point, with which the iPhone won't compete even slightly. Maybe this isn't such a problem after all, then?
Can't tell.
To your first point: knowledge of touch screens and suspicion of their likely appearance on iPods soon may cause a problem for vPod sales, true enough. But then, this quarter wasn't a big quarter for iPod, so ... I think we may have to wait until the quarter in which folks traditionally graduate in order to see if we have UI-driven Osborne effect in iPods after the iPhone announcement.
There's quite a bit of uncertainty in the quarter, what with Osborne effect worries, options worries, and guaranteed periods of low news. I can see 70s :-) I'll keep writing options ... recently sold some Mar85 ccs for $5.50 (having traded out of my Feb 90s for over 20% profit in a period of what, two days?), which was fun. I mean, I can't get 90 today, and the stock's volatility would let me potentially trade out of the position and back in, and if the price just drops I keep the money, which wasn't bad. Uncertainty can be fun in the short term.
Long term, I'm expecting the operational stuff to resolve well. Given the apparent pace of the DOJ stuff, it's likely I'll own a lot fewer shares by the time that resolves (or at least own less % of my holdings in AAPL ... I'm still shamefully overweight AAPL).
Take care,
--Tex.
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