Smart apple

From a BBC News report today by BBC North America business correspondent Stephen Evans on what is it about Apple and its products that inspires such near-religious devotion from users:

Clearly, [Apple] is getting a lot right. Its devotees (disciples?) swear by their products as being effective and easy to use. It’s just that there’s something more to it than that: the packaging and sales-pitch have succeeded brilliantly in conveying a whole life-style and image.

That style emanates from the top. Steve Jobs is the counter-image of a stuffy businessman. He wears trainers, jeans and black sweaters.

Apple’s attitude to the media is actually tight and highly controlled yet the image portrayed is of a cool and easy-going counter-culture.

Absolutely. Make no mistake – behind all those cool-dude iPods, Mac minis and iTunes is a very focused company with some very smart business people who seem to have some good clues as to what they’re doing and where they’re going. (And CEO Steve Jobs has a cool blog.)

Evidence: sales of 10 million digital music gadgets and 65% of that market space, plus $295 million profit on total revenues of $3.49 billion in the last calendar quarter of 2004.

From a Reuters report:

Apple posted a quarterly profit [on Wednesday] that blew past even the highest Wall Street forecasts on skyrocketing sales of its iPod digital music players and the highest number of Macintosh computers sold in more than four years. Shares of Apple, which issued a forecast for the current quarter that was above consensus analyst expectations, jumped 13 percent in after-hours trading.

[…] That tore past the high end of analyst expectations, 55 cents, by a wide margin, according to Reuters Estimates, and both net income and revenue set records.

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