One thing that Apple is definitely doing right is trying to corner the digital Film market. There are two main reasons that this is a winning strategy:
(1) This niche market is very likely to quadruple in size over the next three years, as digital film hardware continues to cheapen and digital film distribution becomes a reality, so the small companies that Apple purchases, like Nothing Real, have great potential to grow dramatically.
(2) High-end Film software technologies always trickle down to professional video, and then to the consumer digital video market. And of course consumer DV is growing rapidly.
I'm looking forward to Apple becoming the next SGI in the film and video world. SGI, until it started to falter and adopted Windows NT as its platform, was the reigning king in that market. If Apple buys Avid, they will own the professional video market too. This is not a bad niche, if you have to be in a niche! It's a lot healthier than, say, Day Trading software.
Dave |
