During his keynote speech at the
Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc.
would thereafter be known as "Apple Inc.", because the company had
shifted its emphasis from computers to consumer electronics. This event
also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. The
company sold 270,000 iPhone units during the first 30 hours of sales, and the
device was called "a game changer for the industry". Apple
would achieve widespread success with its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products,
which introduced innovations in mobile phones, portable music players and personal
computers respectively.[97] Furthermore, by early 2007, 800,000 Final Cut
Pro users were registered.
In an article posted on Apple's website
on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on
the iTunes Store without digital rights management(DRM), thereby allowing
tracks to be played on third-party players, if record labels would agree to
drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly
announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store,
effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and
Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce the corresponding
changes to the iTunes Store.
In July 2008, Apple launched the App
Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod
Touch. Within a month, the store sold 60 million
applications and registered an average daily revenue of $1 million,
with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that the App Store could become a
billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest
mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.
On December 16, 2008, Apple announced
that 2009 would be the last year the corporation would attend the Macworld
Expo, after more than 20 years of attendance, and that senior vice president of
Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller would deliver the 2009
keynote address in lieu of the expected Jobs. The official press release
explained that Apple was "scaling back" on trade shows in general,
including Macworld Tokyo and the Apple Expo in Paris, France, primarily because
the enormous successes of the Apple Retail Stores and website had rendered
trade shows a minor promotional channel.
