Apple released quite a few numbers during the WWDC’11 presentation – a couple of things stand out that are worth a few thoughts. Disclaimer: this is my analytical understanding based on the WWDC statistics shared by John Paczkowski from All Things D in his blog (http://allthingsd.com/
THE MISLEADERS – DON’T LET’EM THROW YOU OFF!!!
- Confusing past sales with current mkt trends??? Point #6,7 Apple’s claim for 44% of mobile market by selling 200M iOS devices till date can be pretty misleading. Apple’s mostly referring to their iOS installed base here – a number irrelevant to the current industry context since people might’ve bought multiple iOS devices over the since 2007 – doesn’t necessarily mean all these devices are in current use. Also, iOS covers iPod Touch too. Notice how they’re quoting ‘active users’ for Macs, but not for iOS (because they’re being clobbered by Android proliferation). Not really apples2apples, that.
- iCloud + iTunes – a potential bottleneck for telcos / ISPs??? Point #9,10 iTunes is beyond any doubt growing (see points #9, 10 below). Apple’s assuming that users will use iCloud to store their downloaded songs (amongst other data) in the cloud and get them delivered on-demand anywhere. Good concept – but the US telcos are already brought down to their knees with the amount of data iPhone users consume. Now imagine ALL of the 15B songs adding up to the already congested networks. Assuming users try to use in-home Wi-Fi networks to accomplish this feat, this puts immense pressure on the ISP industry. This is a challenge Apple (and its telco partners) understands and will try to resolve in due course.
WHAT WAS DOWNRIGHT IMPRESSIVE
- Retail footprint: #1 retail channel for PC software through the Mac App Store!!! Point #2 Significant development considering the Mac App Store (app store for Mac users – MacBook/Pro and iMacs) was announced on Jan 6, 2011. Apple’s retail business is booming – they reported a whopping ~100% QoQ (rev $3.1B) in their Q2’11 earnings. This raises few important questions – is Apple trying a pre-emptive strike to make an early entry into 3rd party app stores for desktops / notebooks and corner market? How does this impact HP’s idea to integrate App Catalog (webOS apps storefront) onto our PCs? Further, Apple’s decision to sell OS X Lion update through the Mac App Store ONLY means Apple clearly wants to focus its efforts on moving away from the traditional channels of media distribution and play a more active role in how it sells software to its users.
- Focusing on growth categories: Point #8 Out of the $24.7B net rev reported by Apple for its Q2’11 quarter, only 1/5th came from its traditional categories of Mac sales (desktop, notebook). Revenue from iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod) accounts for ~3/4th of Apple’s revenue. Within just 3 years of iOS debut (not including ’07 since it had a min. impact on Apple’s revenues), iOS, Apple’s version of post-PC era, is already accounting for ~70% of Apple’s revenue. No other PC vendor has been able to transition its operating model from traditional computing to new-age computing so seamlessly and with this much success. Focusing on iOS also helped Apple maintain an impressive +40% GM mark.
- Installed base marketing opportunity: Point #16 Through iTunes Store registration (mandatory process in order to transact with Apple in any form), Apple potentially has access to +225M (and growing) credit cards. This could be a huge opportunity for them to pursue cross/up-selling activities via targeted IB marketing.
- 90k apps for iPad: Point #13 Most smartphone OS platforms don’t have as many apps, leave alone tablet-specific apps. A huge selection of apps to choose can virtually lock out any potential competition in the tablet category – as far as consumer preferences go.
Perhaps their most significant announcement came from iCloud document streaming and synching. iCloud works with iWork (Apple’s office productivity suite) and synchs any changes made to iWork apps through the cloud. This feature alone has the potential to offer very stiff competition to Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 (think enterprise and SMBs). Enterprises looking to deploy iOS will look at this as a hugely-favorable feature. To enable developer community, Apple’s opened the iCloud APIs too.
Also, from a content delivery network (CDN) perspective, iCloud in its current avatar will only stream photos and music. But what about video streaming services? What are the implications of using iCloud (cloud storage) in conjunction with Apple TV (connected TV) to stream your internet content into digital living rooms (this is getting into the territory of Google TV et al). Apple has already opened up its $1B server farm in North Carolina that is 5X Apple’s largest server facility in Newark. Given that Apple’s burgeoning installed base of users will consumer streaming services such as iTunes movie and TV show rentals as Apple TV becomes more popular, such an investment makes total sense.
STATISTICS FROM WWDC’11 (from All Things D)
1. 5200 developers are attending WWDC this year.
2. The Mac App Store is now the #1 retail channel for PC software over Best Buy and Wal-mart.
3. Mac sales rose 28 percent year over year during Apple’s last quarter, while PC sales declined 1 percent.
4. There are now 54 million active Mac users around the world.
5. Mac sales have outpaced the broader PC market for 5 years, 22 straight quarters.
6. Apple has sold 200 million iOS devices to date…
7. …which accounts for more than 44 percent of the mobile market.
8. 25 million iPads were sold in the device’s 14 months of availability.
9. 15 billion songs have been sold from the iTunes store…
10. …making Apple the #1 music retailer in the world.
11. 130 million books have been downloaded from iBooks.
12. There are 425,000 apps in the app store.
13. 90,000 of them are designed specifically for the iPad.
14. 14 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store in less than 3years.
15. Apple has paid some $2.5 billion to developers building apps for the app store.
16. There are 225 million iTunes Store accounts, all of them with associated credit cards and 1-click purchasing.
17. There are 50 million Game Center users. XBox Live, which has been around for a lot longer, only has about 30 million.
18. IOS users send more than 1 billion Tweets a week. (Looks like this is a general Twitter number, not specific to iOS)
19. To date, about 100 billion push notifications have been sent to iOS devices.
20. The iPhone 4′s camera is the second most used camera on Flickr.
21. OS X Lion boasts 250+ new features and 3,000 APIs.
22. IOS 5 has 200+ new features and 1,500 APIs.
Image courtesy: http://leimobile.com/leak-no-hardware-announcements-will-be-at-wwdc-2011-this-year/
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