SAN JOSE, Calif. — Steve Jobs has a tough act to follow at the Macworld Conference & Expo on Tuesday: himself.
At last year’s trade show, Apple Inc.’s charismatic CEO hurtled into the cellphone industry with the iPhone, jettisoned the word “computer” from the Macintosh maker’s name and launched the Apple TV set-top box.
Since then, Apple’s stock has doubled, its computers’ market share has grown and consumers have continued their love affair with iPod media players.
This year’s announcements aren’t likely to dazzle like last year’s.
Jobs is expected to take the wraps off a movie-rental service, show off an ultra-portable laptop and maybe give the i Phone a faster connection to the Net.
“All I can say for certain is that Macworld 2008 is not going to top 2007. That was the Macworld of Macworlds,” said Charlie Wolf, analyst at Needham & Co.
Still, Apple is expected to boom on. It has targeted sales of 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, meaning the handset that combines the functions of an iPod, cellphone and wireless Web browser could account for roughly 1 percent of cellphones expected to be sold worldwide this year.
There is little doubt among observers that it can reach that goal.
Sales of the iPod, meanwhile, are still growing, though not as fast as before. And they could pick up steam again.
Analysts expect Apple to post record sales again this year despite concerns of an overall slowdown in consumer spending. Wall Street predicts Apple will earn $5.09 per share for its fiscal 2008, up nearly 30 percent from $3.93 per share last year, on annual sales that will grow 32 percent to $31.7 billion, according to a poll of analysts by Thomson Financial.
In fact, Apple outpaced the overall PC industry last year. In its last quarterly report, for the period ending in September, the company sold 2.16 million Macs, up 34 percent from the year earlier and more than double the worldwide PC growth rate of 15.5 percent, according to IDC, a provider of information about technology.
A halo effect from iPods has helped. Since the iPod debuted in 2001, more than 119 million have been sold, helping to propel Apple’s market capitalization from $6 billion to $155 billion.
Likewise, analysts believe the iPhone will help lure more newcomers to the Mac platform. Apple’s share of the PC market in the U.S. grew to 7.6 percent in the fall of 2007 from 6 percent the year before, according to Gartner Inc.
Many Wall Street analysts expect Apple’s stock, which closed Friday at $172.69, to surpass $200 in 2008.
Here’s where Apple is probably headed.
• It’s going to the movies, probably announcing Tuesday the addition of movies for rent at its online iTunes Store for $3.99 apiece for 24 hours, the common window Hollywood has imposed on other digital movie-rental services.
Apple will have lots of competition in this arena, but Apple “is setting the table for the consumer movie experience for the next 25 years,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “Today it doesn’t matter, but five, 10 years from now, it’ll be how everybody will be watching movies.”
• It’s going on a diet. A prevailing theory is that Jobs will unveil an ultra-portable notebook, weighing between 2 and 4 pounds, that would fill a hole in Apple’s computer lineup.
American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu predicts the “MacBook Mini” could be priced at $1,500 to $2,000 and could feature a flash-memory drive instead of a standard hard drive to reduce the weight, boost battery life and make it more rugged and reliable.
• It’s going faster. As in 3G, a speedier cellular network option for Web browsing or other data features on the iPhone. Apple may not be ready to discuss this at Macworld.
