financial/investor
10/17/2005, 12:10pm, EDT
Monday, October 17th
Apple making mobile video content play?
Banc of America Securities Chief Financial Analyst Keith Bachman today said "we continue to believe that Apple's iPod video will be an evolutionary opportunity, not revolutionary," while maintaining a "buy" rating with $52 price target. After testing the video downloading features of iTunes 6, the firm concluded that "Apple had more content and more competitive advantage in the music market as compared to the video market," Bachman said. After downloading a Madonna video and an episode of Desperate Housewives, Bachman concluded that while consumers would be satisfied with the download speed, more content will be necessary to make the iPod video appeal to a mass audience, according to a report from Forbes.com. "We suspect we will see strong sales in the fourth quarter, given the buzz over the product, and follow-on sales will depend on the breadth of content," Bachman continued. Bachman estimates that Apple will sell 9.3 million iPod units in the fourth quarter and 29 million units in fiscal 2006, according to the report. Bachman noted "we think Apple is in the early phases of a long term plan to grab a strategic position on the distribution of mobile video content."
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I would expect other networks to quickly get deals set to publish their work on the ITMS.
These guys are a little late to the party, lol.
Am I the only one that remembers when Apple released QuickTime? Early phases? Apple has been laying the groundwork for dominance in video production and distribution for over 10 years!
QuickTime, QTVR, FireWire, iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio, QuickTime Streaming Server, QuickTime on a chip (ie QuickTime on Digital cameras)....
Early phases?
Oh wait, he's suggesting to short the stock, right, because Apple is bound to go out of business soon...?
And, with only 5 shows available currently, he has come to the amazing conclusion that more content is needed?
Wow!
I say, WOW!
H.264 has lots of different uses, but Apple's current use is for the iPod (and perhaps playing on your computer). They're not selling movies, nor does Apple even have the capability to stream your movie to your TV, nor do they even promote doing that (otherwise you'd think they'd do something wacky, like include an S-Video port, or RCA-in/out jacks, or something). And I seriously doubt an H.264 movie would come in at less than 1GB and be as good if not better then a 9GB DVD.
People would watch movies small screen too, since there's plenty of "TV Sucks" people out there who waste their money on DVDs of movies (like movies aren't all formulaic, bland, over-produced, and under-written clap-trap - oooh, but they got big esplosions!).
And why would you want to spend $10 on a movie to download when you could buy it for that much at the store, get the extras people slobber over (but most don't watch), and better video quality?