The San Francisco Chronicle ran a piece at the weekend looking into the recent success of Apple.
"In the past three weeks, shares of Apple Computer Inc. have flirted with all-time highs after a wave of reports from investment houses like Piper Jaffray, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan issued glowing projections about the Cupertino firm's future.
"Why? The iPod family of digital music players has become seminal icons of consumer electronics, a status that Wall Street analysts believe has finally given Apple the means to preach beyond its small but fanatic customer base of Macintosh computer loyalists.
""What's interesting here is that the phenomenon of the iPod has really brought a lot of people into the Apple world,'' said Darcy Travlos, a senior vice president and mobile multimedia technology analyst for Caris & Co. of New York. "With people having experience using Apple (iTunes) software and going out into the retail stores and seeing the iMacs and PowerBooks, more people are becoming aware of the capabilities of Apple products. The iPod was really the item that got people to notice Apple again.''"
There's no doubt that the double whammy of iPod and iMac over the past few years has helped Apple make huge strides forward. They managed to align innovative product with good marketing and break open relatively niche markets into the mainstream.
But I'm particularly interested in how Apple deals with its success in the future, given that its previous business model has relied heavily on producing lots of revenue from a relatively small pool of customers (mainly by encouraging existing users to upgrade regularly or buy new hardware).
Apple products have style and cool value - but is that brand value in danger if its products become ubiquitous?
