Apple Worldwide Developers conference announcements

When Apple makes announcements everyone gets very excited about what new life changing products will be introduced to the world. Yesterday they had a Worldwide Developers conference which included introductions of both new hardware and software. They started it off with some interesting facts about the App store. There are now over 400 million iTunes App store accounts with access to over 650 000 apps. These have been downloaded over 30 billion times. In the last quarter over $5 billion was paid out to app developers. That is an industry that did not exist a few years ago.

So what's new from Apple's production line? A new MacBook Pro was introduced which has a higher resolution retina display similar to the iPad. It has a lower pixel density than any of the mobile gadgets but it is the highest resolution for any PC ever. With further adjustments it's even thinner than before.

That was the hardware side of the announcement followed by 2 software introductions. Firstly we had the new OS X Mountain Lion which is an operating system for the Mac. Interestingly Mac only has 66 million users which means penetration is low. This is a good thing for potential growth as Apple fans shift to the Mac, keeping all their devices under one umbrella after being sold by the iPhone and iPad. The numbers suggest that this is happening.

Then IOS 6 was announced which is the new operating system used on the iPhone and the iPad. There are 365 million devices which use this platform, roughly 220 million iPhones and 65 million iPads. With IOS 6, Siri has various upgrades and will be available to the iPad.

For me however the most exciting development was a feature called Flyover which are 3-D models of Cities and Landmarks much like Google maps. It sounds cliché but you would always expect Apple to make this type of thing cooler and better. Taking nothing away from Google maps, that is awesome! This will also be used as the navigating systems for Apple devices replacing Google. The rivalry continues.

We remain confident in Apple's ability to remain leaders in pretty much everything they are involved in, post Steve Jobs. There were rumours that an Apple TV was to be announced which obviously did not happen but I'm sure Apple are working on something amazing. The options are endless for this company that only trades on a forward PE of 13 for 2012 earnings estimates. We see this recent pull back as a fantastic buying opportunity for the stock.