Apple shifts spotlight to iPod and iTunes
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, September 10, 2008
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the new generation of the iPod Nano in San Francisco on Tuesday.
SAN FRANCISCO — The iPhone may be Apple’s most talked-about product, but on Tuesday Apple focused attention on its most dominant franchise: the iPod and the iTunes music and video store.
At an event here called “Let’s Rock,” Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, announced an array of incremental changes to the iPod product line and iTunes, setting the company up for the holiday shopping season. Jobs unveiled new features and a svelte design for the iPod Nano, a cheaper, upgraded iPod Touch, and a new version of iTunes that can recommend music to buy based on the songs in a person’s music collection.
Jobs also announced that NBC, a division of General Electric, was bringing its television lineup back to iTunes, 10 months after the two parties clashed over how much flexibility NBC would have on the pricing of new NBC programs. Both sides now say they got what they wanted. Television shows from NBC and other networks will all cost $1.99 for standard video quality, and $2.99 for high-definition video quality. Older shows like “Kojak” will sell for 99 cents.
Jean-Briac Perrette, who runs digital distribution for NBC Universal, said that NBC would have liked even more options, but that Apple had given the network most of what it asked for.
“We are pretty comfortable that most of what we are doing will work within those three tiers,” Perrette said.
Jobs said in an interview that the resolution came through personal discussions with Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal. “We both knew we wanted to get this together, and our mutual customers wanted us to get this together,” he said. “They let us know, we worked it out, and everyone is happy.”
Among the changes announced to the iPod line, the most significant was to the iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone in form but lacks the calling features or monthly subscription plan. The new device will cost $229, a $70 price cut that should make the device more appealing to mainstream buyers and expose them to Apple’s App Store and its thousands of games and other programs.