In a Q&A session at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas, Apple COO Tim Cook gave an update on Apple's future plans for the Mac, iPhone and iPod businesses as well as Jobs' "hobby", the Apple TV. In summary the Apple exec saw huge growth potential in all 3 businesses and "is onto something" in regards of the "nichy" Apple TV product.

"We see enormous opportunities in the things we're in... Apple can do anything it puts its mind to.... We do products where we control the primary technology... Where we can make a difference... And there's a passion for excellence at Apple... Excellence has become a habit in the company", said Cook.

About the Mac business: A movement rather than just product growth

Although It was not surprising to hear the Apple COO telling a group of high caliber investors that the "Mac is years ahead of Vista" or that the latest 44% growth in Mac sales resemble more of a "movement rather than just product growth", some of the numbers he gave about Apple's Mac business did sound quite amazing.

- Apple is selling 7 millions Macs a year, versus a total market of 260 millions computers. So lots of people to convert from Windows to Mac;
- Will be selling Macs in over 600 Best Buy stores;
- Apple surpassed Dell as #1 supplier of portables in the U.S. education market in 2007;
- Students intention to buy a Mac this year reaches 44% versus 20% last year.The question went from why buy a Mac to why not!

On track to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008

The iPhone is more a platform than a product, according to Cook. "Very few companies in the world can build a platform".

“We started by getting developers to focus on Web 2.0 apps. There’s over a thousand of these today. But people also want to do more than that. As we got into the phone more and more, it became clear that we should release an SDK... This will make the product even more compelling... This is a product that has the highest product satisfaction ratings of any Apple product".

On the issue of "hacking" and why so many iPhones are either not yet activated or are used in other telco networks and other regions than the 4 currently chosen by Apple, Cook had these answers:

- The demand for the iphone is so intense. People are exporting out of the U.S. and running it on local carriers. There's a lot of worldwide demand. It's only going to get better. The iPhone will roll out this year in Asia and in more EU countries;
- There are iPhones bought in September that were only activated in December as customers were waiting for their current cell phone plan to terminate;
- And Having people stepping over each other for the phone isn’t a bad thing.

Apple's COO also mentioned that Apple is not "wedded" to a particular carrier or business model. Meaning, Apple will not rule out to have more than one carrier selling the iPhone on a particular market. Apparently, Apple does not have an "exclusive" deal with the carriers.

Finally, in a report published today by Swiss investment bank UBS AG, analyst Nicolas Gaudois expects 3G-enabled iPhones to be released by mid-year and that the current EDGE iPhone platform will be ramped down earlier than expected to "clean" inventories. The 3G wireless chip will likely be produced by German chipmaker Infineon Technologies.

iPod Touch is a key product for Apple's future

For Cook, the iPod Touch extends the iPod brand, testing the MP3 market price elasticity (49$-499$!), and is the first true portable mainstream Wi-Fi device in the market. Although the iPod Shuffle pulled down the number of the total of iPod units solds (only +5%), the iPod Touch actually pushed up Apple's revenue for that category (+17%). In regards of the saturation of the US market for MP3 players, Cook pointed out that in Apple's last quarters, 40% of the iPods were sold to new buyers.

"This is not a sign of a saturated market".

Apple TV, still a "nichy" product

I found Cook's comments on renting vs buying movies right on the money: people usually watch a movie once, a perhaps a second time just right after, and that's my case, but will listen to their favourite songs several times a day. So it makes a lot of sense to start renting movies. Now will that be enough to boost the Apple TV from a nichy product to a real business? Time will tell.