A Cross Roads for Apple

Mark Mulligan | September 09, 2008, 04:11 PM

There’s perhaps a little more anticipation than usual of Apple’s forthcoming announcement (and I'm beinging to fear there won't be anything groundbreaking from a music perspective, but I can still hope). In some ways Apple are at a cross roads. As a maker of high end portable media devices they have built something of ceiling of growth with the iPhone. If you have an iPhone you have most of what you need from a portable media player. The meat of Apple’s iPod target customers are iPhone target customers. So future revenue opportunity with these customers either centres on either selling them new iPhones or extra iPods in the home. Or large screen & capacity video optimized devices perhaps?

So if the core of iPod target customers become iPhone target customers, who become the new target iPod customers? And is a portable device even the best product to reach those customers? And what are the implications for record labels? Will music be as important in the future of Apple as it is now?

The answers to these questions won’t be answered tonight, but we may see the first steps. I’ll be twittering during the event and blogging soon after. You can follow my Tiwtter feed here: http://twitter.com/Mark_Mulligan