Three things to watch for this week from Steve Jobs and company
While it has the media’s attention — having dazzled it last week with the launch of the iPad — Apple (AAPL) may have a few more tricks up its sleeve in the days ahead.
- iPhone 4.0: Apple has summoned the press to its Cupertino campus Thursday, April 8 for a “sneak peek of the next generation of iPhone OS software.” Speculation about what it means for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch began immediately and read like a blogger’s wish list: multitasking, higher screen resolution, support for a second camera, unified e-mail inbox, enhanced voice-to-text, music streamed from the cloud and more.
- iAd: On Wednesday April 7, according to a widely circulated report in Online Media Daily, Apple is going to brief Madison Avenue executives on a new mobile advertising service (reportedly called iAd) that Steve Jobs has reportedly called “revolutionary,” Apple’s “next big thing” and an antidote to mobile ads that “suck.” A one-stop Apple-branded service that works as seamlessly as the iTunes Store could have enormous appeal to agencies and media companies preparing to sell into all that iPad screen real estate. It could also put Apple in serious conflict with Google (GOOG), which reportedly has patents on a lot of the things Apple may want to do, such as serving ads dynamically that are tailored to a user’s location.
- iPad: Apple on Monday released some carefully selected data points from the devices’ closely watched launch (over 300,00 units sold on Day One, over 1 million apps purchased, over 250,000 books downloaded). But as the inevitable second-week stories about early problems dribble in (so far we’ve heard that iPads can overheat in the sun and may have Wi-Fi issues), Apple may choose, before the end of the week, to counter them with some more nice round numbers.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
