Following updates on Apple’s retail store operations, CEO Tim Cook got down to business, sharing news on the company’s launch of OS X Lion and steep growth across every product category Cupertino has to offer.
CEO Tim Cook revealed Tuesday morning that Apple is firing on all pistons, with a focus on four major product categories during the opening of the “Let’s talk iPhone” keynote address, the first with Cook at the helm.
OS X Lion is off to a roaring start, with six million copies downloaded so far -- an 80 percent increase from Mac OS X Snow Leopard. By comparison, Microsoft’s Windows 7 took 20 weeks to reach a 10 percent install base, which OS X Lion achieved in only two weeks.
Cook likewise touted the company’s new MacBook Air, which he described as “thin and light and beautiful and wicked fast -- our customers love it and our competitors have been trying to copy it,” no doubt a sly jab at Intel’s own Ultrabook efforts.
“The MacBook Pro and the iMac are the number one best-selling notebook and desktop in the United States,” Cook announced as he continued discussing hardware. The Mac platform has grown by 23 percent in the last year, while the PC grew a mere four percent in comparison. Apple is fast approaching 60 million Mac users worldwide.
“There are still 77 percent of people who are buying something else,” Cook revealed. “What does that mean? We have an incredibly high ceiling here. We have a long way to go.”
Moving on to the company’s music business, the iPod currently holds a 78 percent market share as the number one music player with a whopping 300 million iPods sold to date. “It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman cassette players,” Cook notes, revealing that 45 million iPods were sold from July, 2010 to June, 2011 -- clearly that product category is far from dead, with the company refreshing last year’s iPod nano and iPod touch models yet again.
Finally, Cook circles back to the star of the show, the iPhone. “This could be the reason why the room is so full today,” he quipped, noting that the iPhone 4 makes up a full half of the total iPhone market with 125 percent growth year over year compared to only 74 percent for other smartphones.
Apple’s mobile phone satisfaction rating is off the charts at 70 percent for the number one slot, with HTC second at only 49 percent. The iPhone now makes up five percent of the overall mobile phone market.
Last but not least, Apple’s latest category, the iPad, is “showing up everywhere,” according to Cook, with the tablet being particularly useful in schools, hospitals, government and industry. A full 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies are now either testing or deploying the iPad, which is the “undisputed” number one tablet in the world thanks to a 74 percent market share.
Apple’s “Let’s talk iPhone” event wrapped up this morning with announcements of a refreshed iPod nano and iPod touch, iOS 5 and iCloud arriving on October 12 and the new iPhone 4S hitting stores on October 14, with Sprint added as a third U.S. carrier and a 64GB model available for the first time at $399 with two-year agreement.
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