Apple’s week ahead
Big week ahead for Apple. Tomorrow (1.30pm PST) it announces its Q4 2009 (fiscal Q1 2010) financials. The effect of earnings announcements on stock prices is all about market expectations. It seems that Apple is typically conservative when issuing profit guidance (or perhaps more accurately, infamous for low-balling). Analysts caught on long ago and have adjusted their expectations accordingly, but it will be interesting to see how well Apple actually did.
Here is an interesting article about Apple’s price movements at market close last Friday, and an even more interesting one on shorting of Apple stock.
On Wednesday, Apple is expected to release its tablet. Analysts have forecasted a tablet product could add several billion dollars to their top line. People will be looking at pricing point of the tablet and what it actually does on Wednesday (10.00am PST), but the bar set pretty high. Let’s hope it doesn’t cost $1000.
Apple needs to pull something out of the bag with this one. People are expecting a larger, cooler iPod – all the rumored features are nice and modern, but not revolutionary. The iPhone already does a lot. It needs to be more than an iPhone with a bigger screen.
Perhaps they are focusing more tying lots of licensed content into it, since it seems to be a media device that is aimed at tackling the Kindle market (and more), and that will enable them to do really cool stuff – a universal media library. Perhaps they have a new UI. Perhaps will be able to sense certain proximate devices like Microsoft Surface.
I expect to be able to use the tablet as a universal remote, as a substitute for the morning newspaper, watching TV on the go, an exercise book in meetings. I expect to be able to hang the thing on a wall and hook it up to something which reports real-time information (like Seesmic Look, a Flickr feed, or a stock ticker). I expect to be able to use it for even cooler augmented reality applications (especially games!).
1:13pm 
