Apple Romps With Mega-Earnings, New Offerings

How does a brand known for some of the world’s most innovative products spend the day it reports estimate-trouncing quarter-ending profits? If you’re Apple, which is enjoying a 47% profit increase, you’re announcing a redesign of several computers and peripherals (including the instantly lauded Magic Mouse), readying the introduction of (non-pirated) iPhones to China next month, and dropping hints (maybe) about a new line of tablet computers.

Add to that Apple’s efforts to help Think-Differently-cize Disney’s retail locations, recent operating system and iTunes upgrades, and anticipation of the latest attempted iPhone killer and the first Microsoft retail store, and you’ve got a busy brand that continues to defy definition.

As Apple’s stock price flirts with the $200 mark for the first time, many analysts, not to mention the Apple acolytes, find little fault in its (Steve) Jobs performance. But eWeek notes that despite Apple’s financial gains – in part due to recent Microsoft missteps (cough, cough, Vista) – Apple’s market share might slow down or even erode once Windows 7 is released on Friday.

Tech guru and Walt Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg not only hails Windows 7 as “the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced,” but still hands the iPhone the smartphone edge, even though he feels as if it’s “raining” iPhone competition.

Lest these developments threaten to take the shine off of Apple, fellow WSJer Keith Johnson suggests yet another channel of innovation for Jobs and the Gang: smart-energy apps for environmentally-friendlier products such as electric cars:

If Apple can turn an expensive consumer gadget into a profit driver in a recession, it might really clean up if the clean-energy economy ever gets going.

So if the Apple logos have been rainbow-colored and monochrome and currently silver/transparent, the next one should be green. Just don’t tell Apple Corps.