Business Reporters Bite Into Apple Story From All Directions

By Ryan Basen
October 21, 2005 01:46 PM

Apple Computer Inc. has established a reputation for understanding the technology industry and thinking ahead. Covering the Cupertino, Calif., company demands those same two attributes.

 

So say business reporters who have paid close attention to Apple, which is transitioning from primarily a computer producer to a maker of portable entertainment products.

 

"I cover Apple like I cover all of my companies," writes Therese Poletti, who has covered the company for Reuters and, now, the San Jose Mercury News, in an e-mail. "I try to stay ahead of the news, if at all possible, and guess what their next moves may be."

 

That poses a challenge for business reporters, as Steve Jobs has seemingly made a career out of being an unpredictable maverick.

 

His latest stunt -- calling a press conference last week to introduce a new iPod capable of downloading and playing video, and to announce a deal with the Walt Disney Co. -- surprised many journalists. Apple had already introduced another new iPod product, the nano, and Jobs joked to reporters a year ago that playing video on an iPod was as likely as using it to make toast.

 

Todd Bishop, a business reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, approached the Apple story by reporting how it would affect the company's biggest rival. Bishop, who has been covering Microsoft for more than two years, focused on the competitive interplay between the two companies in the surging portable entertainment market.

 

The companies employ different product-development strategies, and Bishop says he's interested to see which one works more effectively -- especially as Apple has re-emerged as a serious player in the technology industry.

 

"That's one of the really intriguing things," Bishop says. Apple is "a company that's been around for a while that's going through something of a resurgence."

 

Apple's decision to introduce an iPod with video capabilities, Bishop wrote in a recent piece, is one of many moves that could seriously challenge Microsoft's stranglehold on the market.

 

Another way that business reporters are covering Apple is by monitoring Wall Street.

 

Apple sold 6.45 million iPods and 1.2 million McIntosh computers in the third quarter of this year, quadrupling its profits from a year ago. Yet those numbers didn't satisfy investors. Apple shares fell 10.5 percent in after-hours trading on the day the company released its financial report last week. 

 

"It's very typical of Wall Street," Poletti writes. "They were expecting Apple to report a blowout quarter. Wall Street is all about expectations."

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