News for Thursday, 18 January 2007

According to some analysts, the potential departure of Steve Jobs from his Apple CEO position would strongly affect share, as much as -25%, in other words about 20 billions US$. Other analysts from Piper Jaffray (usually well informed about Apple) has a name for this scenario: a disaster.
Does Apple have a future without Steve Jobs? Of course this is in relation with the current investigation about the Stock Options affair, even though SJ does not seem to be personally involved. But one should also not forget that things change and evolve, and SJ might at some time leave his position, reasons might not necessarily be legal.
While this can be the subject of fear for analysts, as they have a tendency to always over-estimate or evaluate information or hypothesis; one should also realize that Apple has never been in such good shape in its recent history:
- the iPod-iTS ecosystem delivers substantial benefits, and still for many years ahead.
- having Apple using Intel CPUs should release the fear of investors of Cupertino using a exotic processor or architecture.
- if Apple's market share remains low, consumers start to discover that the iPod manufacturer is also offering other cool products, including computers and powered by an advanced OS.
In summary, we think that Apple can really keep going without Steve Jobs, as its charismatic CEO has shaped the company and its executive enough over the last decade to be sure that his idea and innovating spirit will remain and keep driving Cupertino in the right direction.

While financial reports for the last quarter did not look as good as expected by analysts, Intel unveiled some interesting information related to its technologies and roadmaps:

• Intel completed the development of its next-generation 45nm process technology which is scheduled for production in the second half of 2007, ramping to three 300mm factories in 2008. Intel also produced samples of Penryn, the company’s first 45nm processor, and booted the Windows* Vista*, Mac OS X*, Windows* XP and Linux operating systems using first silicon.
• The company shipped more than 70 million 65nm microprocessors during 2006 and ramped dual-core technology to greater than 50 percent of fourth-quarter shipments.
• Intel launched the industry’s first quad-core microprocessors for volume servers and PCs. The company is now shipping nine different quad-core processors for servers, workstations and PCs, including a new Intel® Core™2 Quad processor for mainstream PCs.
• Apple* announced a new Apple TV product that uses a low-power Intel processor and chipset to help stream premium music, TV shows, movies and photos from personal computers to widescreen TVs.
• Intel demonstrated its first mobile WiMAX silicon which is being designed into solutions that will give future laptops and mobile devices broadband access over both WiFi and WiMAX networks, automatically seeking the best available connections.
• Intel began volume shipments of the industry’s first 65nm NOR flash chips featuring multilevel cell technology that stores two bits of data in each transistor. The new flash chip provides cell phone designers with a gigabit of storage for data such as megapixel-quality photos and MPEG-4 video clips.

Penryn will sport 3MB cache per core and will support SSE4, a new instructions set that never been as close as Altivec.
This is to our knowledge the first time that Intel take advantage of its collaboration with Apple to mention Cupertino-branded products. Things change and evolve.

While the information remains to be confirmed by other sources, hdtvblogger.com reports that one could bypass anti-copy protection of Blu ray disc with a PS3 booting with Linux. This hack seems to be possible only via a software solution without modifying the hardware part of the SONY game station.
It might have double consequences for SONY: embarrassments due to Blu ray DRM already hacked with a SONY hardware... and boosting sales of the PS3 as it appears as the only required hardware piece for this trick.

Apple announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 first quarter ended December, 30th 2006. As expected, it beat Wall street expectations, posting a record revenue of $7.1 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.0 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share. When comparing these results with those obtained a year-ago $5.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $565 million, or $.65 per diluted share, it clearly illustrates how apple is doing well. The gross margin is 31.2%, up from 27.2% in the year-ago quarter. Importantly, international sales accounted for 42% of the quarter’s revenue.
During the last quarter, Apple shipped 1,606,000 Macintosh units and 21,066,000 iPods, in other word 28% growth in Macs and 50% growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.