Tag: businessweek

BusinessWeek has posted a special report entitled “Apple: The Next Generation.” The feature includes five articles: “Apple: Sweetness Regained” (It’s making healthy sales gains in schools, corporations, and the government sector — without the benefit of an iPod halo effect); “Will Uncle Sam Like the Taste of Apple?” (iPod’s success has made federal buyers warm up to Jobs & Co.’s other products, and

iPod and iTunes are digital music’s top act, but the marketing muscle of Virgin’s Richard Branson makes him a “challenger to be feared,” Alex Salkever writes in the latest column at Business Week Online. Virgin is the “first potential challenger with branding moxie that can match even Apple’s,” he adds. The group, which posted revenues of US$7 billion in 2003, also “has far better natural distribution channels for digital music than Apple,” the columnist opines.

In his latest column for BusinessWeek, Alex Salkever says that Apple’s real worry isn’t the loss of Internet Explorer — it’s the growing chance that Microsoft will abandon Office for the Mac. “That Redmond pulled the plug on IE for Apple was hardly a surprise. After all, Jobs & Co. must have expected some reaction when it released Safari.

In BusinessWeek’s Byte Of The Apple column, Alex Salkever says that a promising new set of chips, a Mac OS X version of QuarkXpress, a surge in the online ad market, and the new iTunes Music Store could “goose” Apple sales and its stock. “Several stars are set to align for Steve Jobs & Co. Although Apple won’t talk about it, IBM has confirmed that it’s developing a new set of chips for the Mac.

In BusinessWeek’s latest “Byte of the Apple” column, Alex Salkever writes about Microsoft’s recent purchase of Virtual PC, and how Apple could gain independence from the software giant by helping to develop Bochs, open-source software that functions as a Windows emulator on Unix machines.

BusinessWeek’s latest Inside Wall Street column states that Apple shares should rise starting this month. A hedge-fund manager who has been buying Apple shares said that “Any uptick in sales [which he expects soon] will catapult the stock back to the mid-20s.” An upgrading of computers bought about five years ago and the traffic at Apple Stores will help push sales up, he says.

BusinessWeek’s Charles Haddad has posted an article commenting on a recent Giga Information Group report stating that “Apple is in full retreat in almost every market segment, home users being the prominent exception.” Haddad notes they Apple’s death has been predicted time and time again, and not only does the company survive, but turns a profit to boot.

Business Week Online has posted excerpts of a Q&A session with author and retail guru Paco Underhill, in which he discusses the positives and negatives of Apple’s retail stores. Underhill says he loves Apple’s retail stores, but notes that they could use some fine-tuning. “For customers coming in as families, it’s not clear exactly how they should use the stores. In [Apple’s] defense, I have thought the people who worked in the stores were very well trained.