New Mac Products Take Center Stage

"Developers are taking full advantage of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) core strategies in Mac OS X," said Jim Dalrymple, editor online for MacCentral.com, who presented the "Best of Show" awards in Boston at the Macworld opening night celebration.

The "Macworld Best of Show Awards" represent a highly coveted honor within the Macintosh industry.

Contributing to the momentum of the show, Apple announced today that it has begun shipping its new AirPort Express, which the company is calling the world's first 802.11g mobile base station.

"With over 80,000 pre-orders, AirPort Express is off to a great start as the first 802.11g mobile base station for Mac and PC users," Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said.

Macworld Show Winners

The Best of Show winners for Macworld are:

Native Instruments' Guitar Rig: Turns the Mac into a high-end guitar setup using virtual effects, amplifiers and cabinets. An included foot controller called Rig Kontrol enables guitarists to activate effects with four assignable switches and one pedal, without requiring a MIDI or USB interface.

Parliant's PhoneValet Message Center: Turns the Mac into a telephone answering service, complete with voicemail, caller ID, call recording and fax support . PhoneValet Message Center works through a USB interface attached to your phone line, and supports AppleScript to enable additional functionality and connectivity to third-party applications.

To be eligible for Best of Show consideration, products were either making their public debut at Macworld Expo or were recently introduced and likely to generate excitement on the show floor.

Airport Express Shipping

Amid the new product debuts, one product garnering much attention today is the Airport Express, which Apple announced is now shipping. In addition to wireless Internet connections and USB printing, the much-hyped AirPort Express features both analog and digital audio outputs that can be connected to a home stereo. Together with AirTunes music networking software, Airport Express will allow users to wirelessly stream music from iTunes on their Mac or PC to any room in the house.

"With the breakthrough AirTunes feature, music lovers can now listen to their iTunes music collection streamed wirelessly to a stereo located anywhere in their home," Schiller said.

AirPort Express includes a built-in combination digital and analog audio connector allowing users to connect it to a home stereo, powered analog speakers or the latest digital 5.1 surround sound systems. iTunes 4.6 automatically detects the remote speakers and displays them in a simple pop-up list for the user to select.

Once the remote speakers are selected, AirTunes wirelessly streams the iTunes music from the computer to the AirPort Express base station.

AirTunes music is encoded to protect it from theft while streaming across the wireless music network and uses Apple's lossless compression technology to ensure no loss of sound quality. AirPort Express provides a range of up to 150 feet, and multiple AirPort Express base stations can be bridged together to send music to extended areas.

Apple Profits Up

In other news, Apple today announced it posted a net profit of US$61 million in the third fiscal quarter ended June 26th. This was up from a net profit of US$19 million in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for the quarter was US$2.014 billion, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 27.8 percent, up from 27.7 percent in the year-ago quarter.

International sales accounted for 39 percent of the quarter's revenue. The quarter's results include an after-tax restructuring charge of US$6 million. Excluding this charge, the company's net profit for the quarter would have been US$67 million, or 17 cents per diluted share.

"It was an outstanding quarter -- our highest third quarter revenue in eight years," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. "Our Mac-based revenue grew a healthy 19 percent, and our music-based revenue grew an incredible 162 percent. We've got a strong product portfolio, with some amazing new additions coming later this year," he said.

"We were very pleased with our 30 percent year-over-year revenue growth and our operating margin expansion," Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said. "Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004, we expect revenue of about [US]$2.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of 16 cents to 17 cents, including 1 cent per diluted share in restructuring charges."