Motorola SLVR L7: new iTunes phone

Motorola has released a new iTunes phone. Its not a RAZR style flip phone, but a candy bar style phone with some of the visual elements of the RAZR. Supposedly its still limited to a 100 song capacity.

Apple, 55 Cents, And Advertising

As is turns out Apple is splitting video revenue approximately 70/30 and are keeping $.55 of every $1.99 download which is less than double the $.30 it takes on every $.99 download. With this model it appears that the TV industry is making as much money on downloads as they are on DVDs according to a Nielsen analyst. Considering that using the current advertising model, a hit show like Desperate Housewives brings in $12 million, on a per user basis that is only $.57 per user! So if only 20% of Desperate Housewives watchers downloads the show at $1.99 the network would make $15 million. Thus online distribution will allow the TV networks to make even more money than they are currently making. Also it appears that currently iTunes downloads adds viewer rather than cannibalizing existing viewers so both models could coexist for some time.

Microsoft considering making MP3

Perhaps Steve Jobs comments about Microsoft entering the MP3 market themselves was not bait after all. Perhaps Jobs knew of the Microsoft initiative and was essentially telling Microsoft that he wasn't scared of them. Perhaps they came to him and said that if doesn't license iTunes DRM (Fairplay) they will spend $xx billions of dollars making an MP3 player, to which he said go ahead :)

Napster lays off 10% of staff

Contrary to previous statments made by Napster executives, Napster staff have been laid off. 10% of the workforce were told to exit without being given prior notice from the programming and marketing divisions. Management is still claiming that this is not part of a larger strategy to lay off works or liquidate the company.

iTunes dominates industry, likely will force consolidation

While only mentioning the Napter liquidation rumors in passing, this post indicates that Apple's dominance in the music download industry is such that smaller competitors may not be able to survive. They will have to sell to larger competitors or merge with each other. No new information on whether the 20million iTunes that were sold in the last week of December resulted in higher weekly downloads for 2006.

Napster going under?

Rumors are spreadig that Napster is in financial difficulty and that Napster executives are planning to sell the company or liquidate. Imminent layoffs are also being being reported from inside the company though officially Napster denies any problems. Though Apple iTunes has 83% of the market, they claim that since they have subscribers those subscribers are locked in. That is that if they fail to renew their subscription they lose access to their music. This brings an interesting public perception issue to the fore. If Napster goes under and people lose access to their music without being given a choice then the subscription model will die a very public death under the media spotlight. Apple will claim that iTunes customers own their music and that such a similar debacle could never happen.

Running the numbers on Napsters subscribers is also interesting. With half a million subscribers paying on average $10 per month (most subscribers are probably getting a discount from their school/university), Napster has $5 million in income every month. This is before they pay the music industry. Apple previously had sold 3M songs per day (probably more now), assuming Apple gets 1/3 of the price of the music they are making $30M per month after paying the music industry.

iTunes boosts prime time ratings for NBC, ABC

NBC and ABC report higher ratings for their iTunes offerings. In part this could be to the media exposure of adding the shows to iTunes as well as the the effect iTunes itself has. NBC's the Office had its highest ever ratings and ABC's "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" were up over their ratings at this period last year.

Analysts increase their price targets for Apple

Given that Apple sold more than even the highest analyst estimate of iPods (14m vs 11m), many analysts scrambled today to increase their expectations for the stock. Even though Apple did not sell as many Mac computers as expected, analysts are bullish on Apple 06 Fiscal year.

UBS moved their price target from $86 to $100. American Technology Research moved from $77 to $101. Piper Jaffray left their $80 price target on concern over slowdown in sales before Apple fully transitions to Intel processors in all of their products. He did note that Apple releasing the FM tuner remedied the number one reason people bought non iPod MP3 players. Most analysys expect Apple to release new products soon including: a new shuffle, a Mac Mini media server, a cell phone and more media content and a streaming video download service.

Macworld Expo Rumors

Recap of Macworld expo rumors with a few new ones and variations on old ones:

-Apple will introduce new Intel based iBooks possible with a smaller 13.3" screen, which agrees with the rumor that the laptops will be lower in cost.
-Apple will add media features (such as a DVR, music and movie playback on TV's) to its Mac Mini
-Apple will announce more digital content. It seems with the competition from the Google video store that Apple probably will not have the lock on all digital content distribution, but it seems that at least for now they will have the most digital content.
-Apple will introduce a new iPod shuffle. At the least a new shuffle with different colors will be available. The new version may be thinner and include a 1 line screen. Rumors of a 1GB Nano do not seem to show up.

Apple more than doubles iTunes sales, more MP3 players sold than CD players

After all the press reports about the dismal sales increase of digital downloads, the numbers now show the reason. Instead of buying songs, consumers were purchasing iTunes gift cards which they gave as Christmas presents. In 2005 song dowloads increased by 150% with downloads of 352 million over 142 million sold in 2004. Last year a similar pattern emerged with a large increase in downloads in the last week of the year. After this large jump in downloads, weekly downloads increased to levels only 20% below those of the last week. This implies that weekly downloads will increase to 16 million tracks per. This will most likely silence any hopes the music industry had of pressuring Apple and Steve Jobs into allowing variable pricing on the basis that digital music sales might flatten. Interestingly it looks like more iPods are being sold than personal CD players and shelf CD players. This implies that iPods have crossed into the mainstream from initially being a tech gadget.

Return of the 1GB shuffle

Rumors have been going around that the 1GB shuffle is going to be replaced by a 1GB iPod Nano. In the past Apple has allowed orders for old products to be ordered for the new product. So the return of the shuffle does not necessarily mean that the Steve Jobs will not announce a new shuffle. Most likely whatever will be announced will be shipped to people who order the current 1GB shuffle.

Google to sell video, announce more on Friday

Apple has video distribution deals with NBC and ABC, but not CBS. Earlier in the year CBS distributed for free, "Everybody Hates Chris," via Google. Now they are expanding on their partnership and letting Google sell video for CBS. Pricing and content has not been announced, but it would seem that being able to purchase video from Google would probably not require the download of an application such as iTunes. Apple stock was down on the news.

Disney adds more iTunes content

Disney, while not adding any more major ABC shows is adding more video content to iTunes. Most significant among the content its adding is ESPN, which will be offering various BCS Bowl games for viewing the day after broadcast. Most of the content added will be older commercials and lesser known shows from ESPN, the Disney Channel, and ABC Family.

Motorola snubs Apple, takes on iTunes

Even though Motorola has negotiated a 1 year exclusive license to use iTunes on their phones, their next phone will not have iTunes. It will instead have iRadio by Motorola which will have a monthly fee. Perhaps this implies that Apple will be introducing a phone sooner rather than later?