24/7 wankery

WTF:

Everything is not OK at Apple. The iPhone faces threats from new versions of the RIM (RIMM) Blackberry, the Palm (PALM) Pre, and new smartphones from global handset leader Nokia (NOK)

There is also plenty of evidence that Mac sales are slowing. It may be that because many corporations use Windows that Mac market penetration is reaching a ceiling. It many be that cheaper PCs including netbooks are taking  market share.

The last and most important challenge to Apple is the that iPod is eight years old. Almost 200 million iPods have been sold and the rate at which sales of the device are rising has slowed significantly.

1. The Pre was released today, Blackberry took huge losses with 2-1 for deals to make sales number and Nokia’s Ovi is a work in progress. 

2. There was a recession – the deepest since the fucking great depression. Apple sales held up pretty well especially when compared to (a) the PC sales crater and (b) other premium product categories.

3. The iPod has been refreshed 8 times in the past eight years and though the term iPod is 8 years old, the iPod Touch is less than two years old and has replaced  17M iPods.

Again, WTF?

Newspaper correction of the week

WaPo misspells the winning word in 2008 spelling bee!

Analyst recommends strategy for Apple

Ben Reitzes knows a thing about of product development:

“If they start making products people don’t want, and start losing users, then Apple’s strategy will run into problems,” 

Because they could go all nuts and make products no one wants.

The search for Air France 447

Nothing yet:

Separated at birth: Benjamin Cardoza & Conan O Brien

Bing is led by giants

Mehdi:

“It’s a very tall marketing challenge and a very tall product challenge,” acknowledged Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

“It’s going to take multiple steps to get where we want to go,” he added, “and this is the first step.”

Bing has two goals, Mr. Mehdi said: “Win a fan base and start to grow share.” The latter refers to the fact that “every other provider” of search-engine services “has lost market share in the last five years,” he added, “except for the leader” — that being, of course, google.com from Google.

“The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising,” Mr. Mehdi said. To achieve the second point, “you have to do something a little bit more surprising,” he added.

No, you have to build something useful and unique.

When all you need is google as a source

Philip Elmer Dewitt and Journal have zero sources inside Apple but needs stories to compete with blogs and keep up traffic goals. So? Just google something, mash up and voila: instant Apple story with quotes from “anonymous” sources:

Friday’s Wall Street Journal carries a report on the state of Steve Jobs’ health that makes his condition last January — before he went on a six month medical leave — sound more desperate than Apple (AAPL) let on at the time.

“He was one real sick guy,” an unnamed source told the Journal. “Fundamentally he was starving to death over a nine-month period. He couldn’t digest protein. [But] he took corrective action.”

According to this source — who is said to have seen Apple’s CEO in recent weeks — Jobs’ recovery “is coming along” and he should be able to return to work before the end of June, as scheduled.

There is absolutely nothing new. We knew Steve Jobs was suffering from pancreatic cancer with the symptoms in January:

Reports that a hormone imbalance may be responsible for Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’ recent weight loss do little to quell concerns about the pancreatic cancer survivor’s health, endocrinologists said.

In a public statement released Monday, Jobs, 53, blamed the hormone imbalance for “‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”

Jobs, said he will undergo a “relatively simple” treatment and will remain in charge of Apple. “Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.”

And we knew he on his way back during the last analyst call in February:

At its annual shareholder meeting here on Apple’s corporate campus, run by the chief operating officer, Timothy D. Cook, the company responded to inquiries about Mr. Jobs by saying that he still planned to return to the company in June.

I bet this “report” was completely unsourced.