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Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new generation iPod
nano and Touch music players on Tuesday, at the Let's Rock event. He also
announced that the company is also making NBC content available again on
iTunes.
The announcements made at this eagerly expected event will
finally put an end to all these speculations that had been made regarding this
Tuesday event that took place in a theater in San Francisco. Google Chief Executive Eric
Schmidt and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak are among the important people who
took part in the meeting.
But let us take one thing at a time. The iPod upgrades
include two slick new Nano models, oval-shaped devices, which appear to be the
thinnest iPods Apple has ever made. Jobs also presented three new versions of
the iPod Touch.
The new iTunes Store 8 was also a highlight of the event as
it now adds a new music recommendation engine called Genius, a feature that
comes with an ability to suggest songs and movies to buy, as well as organizes
songs in any collection into a playlist. It works by sending data from user's
library to the iTunes Store, thus the company can analyze your music taste.
iTunes has sold 5 billion songs, far more than any other
music retailer. Its catalog now contains over 8 million songs and 20,000 TV
episodes and 2,200 films for sale.
However it seems that what Mr. Jobs unveiled today doesn’t
really come as a surprise. Apple’s stock price falling 3 percent during the
presentation proves that (well it could have been a consequence of the function
of today’s down market as well).
As far as prices are concerned, the iPod Touch now starts at
$229 for an 8 gigabyte model, a 16 gigabyte version will be $299 and a 32 GB
model will be $399. The new iPod Nano will cost $149 for the version with 8
gigabytes of memory and the 16 gigabyte version will be $199.
The iPod represented about a fifth of Apple's overall sales
last quarter and its sales are beginning to decrease due to the mature market
and competition from lower-priced media players. Jobs said Apple has sold 160 million
iPods since their introduction in 2001.
Apple and NBC had a bone to pick last year and had a dispute
over the prices Apple charges for shows it sells on the online service. But
their deal was officially renewed today. "NBC is important content for Apple
to have on iTunes, especially with the direction it's taking, which is for
iPods to handle more video. Having robust iTunes video is the key to their
success," said Shannon Cross, analyst with Cross Research. TV shows in
standard definition are priced at $1.99 and high-definition shows will cost
$2.99.
In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery
to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. However, he seemed totally up and
about again at the conference. "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"
he said.
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