San Francisco - Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled an upgraded
line of iPod media players Tuesday, as well as a deal to sell NBC
Universal TV shows and movies through the iTunes store.
But investors had hoped for more dramatic product announcements
ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season and sent the company's
shares down almost 5 per cent in Nasdaq trading to 150.70 dollars.
Jobs started the highly anticipated presentation in San Francisco
by referring to widespread rumours of his poor health, flashing a
message on the screen that 'reports of my death are greatly
exaggerated.'
The quote also referred to an obituary for him that was mistakenly
distributed last week by Bloomberg News.
His product upgrades include two new iPod Nano models that Jobs
said were the thinnest iPods Apple had ever made and cost 149 dollars
for the one with 8 gigabytes of memory, with a 16-gigabyte version
for 199 dollars.
The iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone but without
cellphone functionality, was also upgraded and will now sell for 229
dollars for an 8-gigabyte device, 299 dollars for a 16-gigabyte
version and 399 dollars for a 32-gigabyte model.
The iPod classic also got an upgrade with a new, thinner 120-
gigabyte version selling for 249 dollars.
Jobs also announced a new version of iTunes, that includes a so-
called 'Genius' button that automatically creates playlists based on
the song users are listening to at the time.
He boasted about the return of NBC to iTunes a year after the TV
network quit the download site in a dispute with Apple over pricing.
Jobs said that iTunes now offers more than 8.5 million songs, 125,000
podcasts, 30,000 TV shows, 2,600 movies and 3,000 software
applications for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.
Jobs said that iPod and iPhone users have downloaded 100 million
copies of the software applications in Apple's recently launched App
Store.
USA
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