Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The buzz that is starting to build around one of Apple's most anticipated pieces of vaporware resembles the atmosphere at a rock concert before the big act appears. It is now at the stage where if Apple doesn't unveil an iPhone on or before MacWorld Expo 2007 next January, fans will tear the house down. Microsoft's Zune marketing team must be shaking their heads in wonder.
Apple has spent exactly nothing on promoting or
pre-marketing a product that the company has never acknowledged but
somehow everyone knows is on the verge being announced. There have been
leaks from unnamed sources of course.
There was the tale of an order being placed for 12 million iPhones to
be made by Taiwanese iPod manufacturer Foxconn. There were reports of
registration of the iPhone name by Apple (which doesn't prove anything
really). However, in stark contrast to the controlled drip-fed
deliberate leaks that Microsoft is famous for, Apple has maintained an
almost perfect veil of secrecy. The effect on the market has been
stunning.
By the time the Zune player was finally unveiled, practically everybody
knew what it looked like, how it would work and what would be its key
features. Microsoft must have spent a fortune on the pre-launch
publicity. The release itself was practically an anti-climax, as has
been the subsequent reception by the market.
One could argue that Microsoft was nothing in the music player business
so the company needed to throw big bucks at getting the Zune name into
the market. However, one could also justifiably say that Apple is
nothing in the mobile phones business. When one thinks of mobile
phones, one thinks of Nokia or Motorola but certainly not Apple.
Yet, such is the power of Apple's image making wizardry that somehow
consumers believe that the company will be able to do what no other
company has managed to do thus far. They believe that Apple will be
able to successfully combine the best features of an iPod music player
with a stylish and workable mobile phone.
Somehow Apple has managed to convince the public of this without
spending one cent on overt marketing and even admitting that it is
going into the cellphone business. That in itself could be the subject
of a market post-graduate thesis.
For Apple, the stakes are enormous. Some analysts have postulated that
releasing an iPhone may simply cannibalize Apple's existing iPod
business. However, if Apple can break into the mobile phones business,
it could greatly increase the market reach of iPod.
The way mobile phones are bought through carriers for nothing up front,
later to be discarded for a newer model, could well increase the
turnover rate of iPods as well as putting them into the hands of
cellphone users who would otherwise never have considered an iPod.
A word of caution, however, to those who may be bedazzled by the Apple
mystique or blinded by the notion that Apple can do no wrong. Apple and
Steve Jobs have got it wrong before - as those who remember the Newton
and Lisa well know.
However, the latest incarnation of Jobs and co has not had a misstep in
recent years. The world is waiting to see if the iPhone is the latest
in a string of triumphs or proof that Apple has just been experiencing
a long summer.
