By Rachel Chalmers
Though perpetual interim-CEO Steve Jobs declined to comment directly on Apple Computer Inc’s forthcoming consumer portable, he did say that there might be three markets for laptops. They are the high-end, big screen market now served by the G3 PowerBooks; expensive but light sub-notebooks like Sony’s Vaio, aimed at digital road warriors; and a low-cost consumer model. It sounds as if the as-yet-secret consumer product falls into the third category, not the second. That could dash the hopes of Mac fans who, weary of lugging the heavy G3s around, had hoped the iMac portable would be a lightweight.
In stark contrast to the situation only a year or two ago, Apple shareholder meetings are genial lovefests these days. Jobs awarded all shareholders a 20% discount on Apple products, and talked up new markets. We see real opportunity in small business, he said, and we’re going to put a lot of energy into that starting later this year. But Jobs conceded that the enterprise productivity market belongs to Wintel: A frontal assault on it would be a tremendous drain of resources without much probability of success.
The new client operating system, Mac OS X, is on track for release later this year. There are no plans for a Newton revival or competitor to 3Com’s Palm device. Problems with the iMac supply chain were raised, and executive Mitch Mandich noted that where a consumer’s first choice of color was unavailable, most buyers had happily gone with their second or third choice. We made a big gamble in January by going with five flavors, added Jobs. It’s been a challenge for us and for our channel partners. But we’re far enough along now to say it’s been a success – it’s exceeded our expectations, which were pretty high to begin with. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s gone.
