The WAPO reports that Apple has licensed its wildly popular iPod to Hewlett-Packard for an undisclosed sum. This suprising move from a company so obsessed with preserving its brand may be partially explained by the licensee’s commitment to color the devices blue and clearly label them “HP” on the front. No mistaking one for the other, then, and market prices should establish the exact value of Apple’s cachet.
Posted by Marie Gryphon on January 11, 2004Well...maybe. The HP licensing deal is just part of the bigger picture, a picture which was unveiled when Apple created the Windows-compatible version of iTunes. The very day that they did that, I went and bought myself an iPod. I'll continue to use Windows XP, because I can't afford to replace the expensive PC software that I have, but I have a new appreciation for Apple products and would use other Apple software or hardware if it didn't require the purchase of a new machine. But I think this is a new Apple, one which is finally starting to slowly get over its elitism and focus on the bottom line, and not yet to the detriment of the quality of its products.
Meanwhile, the market prices of the HP iPods won't tell us much about the value of blue vs. white, since many will be bundled with new Presarios and the like, and the price will involve many complicated factors beyond the two separate pieces of hardware as a standalone.
Posted by: Lane on January 12, 2004 3:49 PM