News travels fast on Twitter, as Amazon.com Inc. discovered last month.

It was largely through Twitter, an online social network that lets users exchange messages up to 140 characters long, that word spread about gay-themed books disappearing from best-seller lists and search results on Amazon.com. Major media outlets soon picked up the story and within days Amazon admitted it made an error in classifying thousands of books, many unrelated to gays and lesbians, and that it was fixing the mistake.

Delight.com, a much smaller online accessory and gift boutique, also found itself in the midst of a Twitter controversy recently—one that worked out quite differently.

A promotion of a $130 cashmere scarf sparked a comment on Delight.com’s web site that marketing the item was “tasteless” in light of the economic downturn. Tracey Tee, Delight’s co-founder, head buyer and designated tweeter, wanted to know if others thought the same, so she sent the message—called a tweet—to Delight.com’s Twitter followers. That sparked a furious debate on Twitter—and a burst of sales of the item at Delight.com. “We blew through all the scarves within a few hours,” Tee says.

These examples illustrate the peculiar appeal of Twitter: because it only allows short messages, people respond quickly and frequently, and the sense of instant community has made Twitter the hottest thing online. Twitter.com attracted 14 million unique visitors in March, up from just 1.1 million a year earlier, according to web measurement firm Compete Inc.

Twitter has emerged so quickly that most online retailers are just beginning to consider how to use this free medium for communicating with millions of potential customers. Web merchants on Twitter have found it can generate positive results, as long as a retailer adapts to the idiosyncratic Twitter culture and technology.

Getting started

Getting started on Twitter is easy. Anyone, companies as well as individuals, can set up a free Twitter account and begin sending out brief messages. For a retailer, a key part of making Twitter effective is attracting other Twitter users to sign up to follow the retailer—which means the consumer can see the retailer’s tweets on her own Twitter page, or choose to have them sent immediately to her computer or mobile device.

Rather than sending overt marketing messages, considered a Twitter faux pas, Delight.com’s Tee tweets helpful tips, such as updates on the availability of popular products. She recently sent a message when the retailer received a shipment of popular iPod speakers and the new inventory sold out in less than a day. “I’ll say, ‘Okay everybody, we only have 12 left!’” Tee says.

She recently tweeted about a sale to mark Delight’s anniversary, generating a 10% to 20% increase in sales in the merchant’s discount section. “March was our second anniversary and we had a great sale,” Tee says. Because she thought many people did not take full advantage of Delight.com’s sale section, Tee sent out a tweet. The bump in sales the retailer received was too much to be a coincidence, Tee says.

While traffic from Twitter is still relatively low in volume, it’s high in value, Delight.com reports. “Our traffic from Twitter has been low—about 1% of all site traffic, but the conversion rate has been 15% higher than average, and the average order size is 20% above our average cart,” says Lynda Keeler, president and co-founder. The e-retailer receives about 100,000 unique monthly visitors and generated about $1 million in sales in 2008.

Beyond using Twitter to drive sales, Delight also uses it for customer service and market research.

Tee recently asked Delight’s followers if they had completed a purchase at Delight.com and was surprised to find that mothers and daughters tend to be fans of the boutique together. “So many responses were, ‘Me and my mom both shop on Delight,’” Tee says. “That’s some powerful marketing insight.”

Tee, a dog owner, also tweets about her furry friend, prompting lots of responses. Not every tweet has to be about the company and its products, she says. “Twitter is a great way to show people there are humans behind the brand.”

Friend to friend

Twitter was initially designed to enable friends to exchange brief messages. And Michael Serbinis, executive vice president and chief information officer at Indigo Books & Music, says it’s a great fit for a bookseller.

“A key part of reading is being able to talk about what you are reading with friends,” Serbinis says. “Twitter makes this really, really easy.”

Serbinis heads up the retailer’s Shortcovers division, launched in February, which sells electronic books and other publications in a variety of formats for mobile devices.

When Indigo launched Shortcovers, it also opened a Twitter account, and the retailer has attracted about 1,000 Twitter followers in less than three months. The natural instinct to chat about books has made for some interesting Twitter tales.

Top of the charts

For example, the Shortcovers program allows any author to submit content. One obscure short story, “The Virus Coder’s Girl,” about forbidden love in a hostile workplace, quickly became a top tweeted story among Shortcover users. Amid the flutter of Twitter chatter about the story, the piece became one of Shortcovers’ top 10 most-read titles, ranking alongside such popular books as Malcolm Gladwell’s novel “The Outliers,” Serbinis says.

In the short time the company has used Twitter, Serbinis has learned that you never know who might be reading your messages. One of the first followers to comment on a tweet about a bestselling book was the author himself. The tweet, sent by Neil Gaiman, award-winning author of the children’s book, “The Graveyard Book,” sparked a flurry of tweets from avid fans.

Serbinis says the retailer’s three customer service associates send out a few tweets a day with useful info such as the book of the day. And he says he’s considering trying out Twitter-only promotions or deals.

Computer manufacturer Dell Inc. already is tweeting deal offers to its Twitter followers. Dell started using Twitter in March 2007 and now has more than 11,000 followers. It mainly uses the network to tell its Twitter followers about general sales, but also has used it for Twitter-only promotions, including an offer in February for 30% off a notebook computer. The retailer says it’s generated at least $1 million in additional revenue from the network.

Because Twitter is so new, many retailers are still learning their way around. As they do with other online marketing campaigns, merchants can create a custom URL so they can track clicks from links embedded in Twitter messages.

However, the 140-character limit on Twitter makes it important to embed short web addresses so as not to use up valuable space—URL-shortening tools such as Tiny URL, Bit.ly and Ow.ly meet the need, says Susan A. McKenna, CEO of McKenna’s Marketing, a firm specializing in online social media, and former vice president of e-commerce at health and vitamin supplement company Nature Trade Network.

She says retailers also may want to use a tool called TweetLater that allows them to schedule tweets in advance.

Another tip is to use the # symbol in messages so that Twitter users can see all tweets related to a particular retailer or topic en masse. For example, if someone searches Best Buy, the search results will show every message with the words “best” and “buy” in them, not just ones with “Best Buy.” If a Best Buy tweeter wants to create a discussion on the retailer or on a subject, they include #bestbuy or #electronics—savvy Twitter users know to search for such #-oriented phrases, and know to include the phrases in their own tweets.

Using the @ sign is another trick. It makes a reply to a tweet public and viewable by anyone on the sender’s follower list. So, for example, if a retailer wanted all its followers to see an answer to an individual’s question, it would simply tack on the @ symbol in front of that follower’s user name. Retailers also can add automatic Twitter updates to their blogs, web sites or Facebook pages.

McKenna says being upfront about the purpose of the account is key. If a retailer sets up a Twitter account called BestDeals4Vitamins, followers will expect marketing and promotion-focused tweets. If the account is called VitaminInformation, they will be miffed by such offers, she says.

The right tone

It’s best to pique the interest of Twitter users before hitting them with marketing messages, says Jeffrey Mann, vice president of research at consultancy Gartner Inc. and author of a recent report on how businesses are using Twitter. “Earn the right to talk about the marketing aspects by saying amusing and interesting things first,” he says.

And retailers should be cautious not to be overly positive about their brand or overly negative about the competition, Mann says. “You have to understand the etiquette,” he adds.

Mann notes that retailers can follow what others are saying about them on Twitter, using tools such as Search.Twitter.com or an application called twhirl to scan for references to a company or product.

They can also use Twitter to offer advice, generating goodwill and promoting their brand, Mann says. For instance, a gardening supplies retailer might have an employee set up a Twitter account and offer gardening advice, peppering his tweets with the retailer’s name. The employee might also tack on a line to his e-mail signature encouraging recipients to follow him on Twitter.

Delight’s Tee also uses Twitter to try to generate publicity. “There are tons of reporters on Twitter,” she says. “So it’s a great way to connect with them.”

She also has generated some beneficial relationships with other companies through the network. For example, Tee found a make-up brand that was willing to partner with Delight.com, providing samples Delight.com could send customers in exchange for a banner ad on the e-retailer’s home page.

Connecting with the right types of people on Twitter is an important part of building an effective Twitter presence, McKenna says.

“I train my staff—a small army of interns—to find what I call sneezers, subject matter experts or people that others look to for advice,” she says. “We look for people like that and then we follow their gurus or people they respect.” Hopefully, they will find her Twitter account interesting and follow her back so they can receive updates about her.

There are so many Twitter users, and opportunities to communicate with them, that Twitter can easily take up a lot of time, which is something Tee is realizing. “You start digging into accounts and finding cool people,” she says. “And before you know it the dog is barking and your staff is wondering what you’ve been doing the past three hours.”

It’s too soon to say whether time spent on Twitter will generate a lot of sales. But it’s not too soon to say that Twitter has become part of the daily lives of millions of consumers, and that, as Amazon learned, online retailers must pay attention to their tweets.

Apple Inc. is building a significant capability to design its own computer chips, a strategy shift that the company hopes will create exclusive features for its gadgets and shield Apple's work from rivals.

The Silicon Valley trend-setter has been hiring people from many different segments of the semiconductor industry, including engineers to create multifunction chips that are used in cellphones to run software and carry out other chores.

Apple could use the internally developed chips to sharply reduce the power consumption of its hit iPhone and iPod touch devices, and possibly add graphics circuitry to help its hardware play realistic game software and high-definition videos, people familiar with its plans say.

In one sign of the new focus, Apple recently hired Raja Koduri, who was formerly the chief technology officer of the graphics products group at chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Mr. Koduri started at Apple this week, following in the footsteps of Bob Drebin, who had held the same title at AMD and is also now working for Apple. Online job postings from Apple describe dozens of chip-related positions it is trying to fill, some with partial descriptions like "testing the functional correctness of Apple developed silicon."

Besides a desire to beat rivals to market with new features, Apple's shift is also an effort to share fewer details about its technology plans with external chip suppliers, say people familiar with the moves.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

The new effort faces plenty of hurdles, and people familiar with Apple's plans don't expect internally designed chips to emerge until next year at the earliest. Still, Apple's aggressive hiring is another sign of how the company's recent success has allowed it to expand while other tech giants have trimmed their work forces in the recession.

Apple's strategy also marks a break from a long-term trend among most big electronics companies to outsource the development of chips and other components to external suppliers.

Last sp Steve Jobs explained the purchase of Silicon Valley start-up P.A. Semi as a way to acquire expertise and technology to help run increasingly sophisticated software on iPhones and iPods. "You can't just go out and buy the chips off the shelf to do that," said Mr. Jobs in an interview.

Most cellphones are based on chip designs licensed by ARM Holdings PLC to others. For the iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co. supplies an ARM-based microprocessor with custom features developed by Apple, analysts say.

People familiar with Apple's thinking say executives have expressed concern that some information shared with outside vendors could find its way into chips sold to Apple competitors. A Samsung spokeswoman declined comment.

People familiar with the situation say Mr. Jobs told P.A. Semi engineers last April that he wanted to develop chips internally and didn't want knowledge about the technology to leave Apple. Mr. Jobs is on medical leave and was unavailable for comment.

People familiar with Apple's plans expect former P.A. Semi engineers to help create ARM-based chips that could improve the performance and battery life of future iPhones.

Apple's hiring spree in semiconductors started well before the acquisition and has continued through the past few months, according to postings on the networking site LinkedIn. The site contains more than 100 people listing current Apple job titles and past expertise in chips, including veterans of Intel Corp., Samsung and Qualcomm Inc.

Apple's own job postings, some aggregated by the site Indeed.com, provide clues about possible features to come. Two recent postings involve handwriting recognition technology; several others seek expertise in chips for managing displays.

Apple participated in a job fair earlier this month for soon-to-be-unemployed engineers at memory chip company Spansion Inc., which sought bankruptcy protection in March, people familiar with the situation said.

HDTV has finally made it into the mind set of the general public with a whopping 99% of consumers aware of High Definition TV.

However before the likes of Sony and Samsung crack open the champagne, the survey found that only one in ten is looking to buy a new set this year.

The news, which is not doubt worrying for manufacturers suggests that they still have a lot of work to do in selling the benefits of HDTV.

The online panel survey, conducted by market research agency Buckingham Research, asked a total of 695 respondents a series of questions regarding their awareness of and feelings towards HDTV and its associated products.

85% of those asked said that they were aware of it, while a further 14% said they were aware but did not understand it. Only 1% responded that they were unaware of the offering.

It seems the research found the biggest barrier to entry a lack of HD content available in the UK with 45% saying there were not enough HD channels to watch.

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp.’s entertainment division said it is in talks to post movies on Google Inc.’s YouTube video-sharing Web site.

“We are having conversations with YouTube,” Paula Askanas, a spokeswoman for Sony Pictures Television in Los Angeles, said yesterday in an interview. She declined to provide additional details.

No major U.S. movie studio posts full-length films on YouTube. Sony Pictures offers 60 older films, including “Stripes” and “Groundhog Day,” as well as vintage television shows, at its Crackle.com Web site. Hulu.com, whose owners include NBC Universal Inc. and News Corp., shows advertising- supported full-length movies.

Hollywood studios, under attack from film piracy, are trying out older movies on the Internet as they search for ways to accommodate viewers’ changing demands without cutting into revenue from DVDs and pay-television. By putting content on YouTube, the Internet’s most-viewed video site, studios gain access to a larger audience.

“YouTube can help promote their videos,” Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc., said in an interview.

YouTube wants “more high-quality content,” Owyang said. “They really want to up their game.”

Chris Dale, a spokesman at San Bruno, California-based YouTube, declined to comment yesterday on talks with Sony or any other studios for feature films. The Web site already carries long-form content from independent filmmakers, Dale said.

Professional Content

Google, the Mountain View, California-based company that also owns the most-used Internet search engine, rose $3.35 to $362 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have gained 18 percent this year. Sony’s American Depositary Receipts fell 28 cents to $23.36 and have increased 6.8 percent this year.

YouTube, mostly filled with user-generated content, is seeking agreements with film and television studios to add clips of professionally produced programs.

“They want to move out of their Webcam scenario and more into the Web TV category,” Owyang said. “The more content they can index, the better.”

CBS Corp., controlled by Sumner Redstone, puts clips and full television episodes from its broadcast network and from the Showtime cable channel on YouTube. Walt Disney Co., based in Burbank, California, last week agreed to put ABC and ESPN clips on YouTube.

Mainstream advertisers prefer professionally produced content to home video. YouTube shares revenue from advertisements that appear alongside those clips.

Viacom Inc., also controlled by Redstone, is suing Google for allegedly not removing copyrighted material from YouTube that users posted from the company’s Comedy Central and MTV cable channels and its Paramount film studio.

Sony, based in Tokyo, and the world’s second-largest consumer-electronics manufacturer, acquired Crackle, then a video-sharing Web site called Grouper, in August 2006 for $65 million.

Businesses that assume the deepening recession has dampened consumers' desire to go green should think again. Despite the worsening economic outlook, shoppers are still placing an emphasis on environmental concerns, new research suggests.

Two thirds of customers say that environmental considerations inform their purchases to the same extent as they did a year ago, while more than a quarter said that they were now even more conscious of the environmental impact of what they buy, figures from the Carbon Trust, which operates the first carbon-reduction award scheme, show.

While this may help to influence how shops stock their shelves, many businesses may have had to look closer to home to satisfy customers' desire to know that the companies to which they are giving their custom are also making efforts to become more environmentally friendly. Two out of three people think it is important to buy from environmentally responsible companies, with about one in seven saying that they had even decided to take their custom elsewhere if they felt a company's environmental reputation was not up to scratch.

Add the consumer goodwill to the reduction in energy costs brought about by cutting carbon emissions and it seems like a win-win situation for most companies. But as businesses weather the most damaging economic turbulence in decades, many are focusing first and foremost on survival, placing green issues down their list of priorities.

Harry Morrison, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, sympathises. “I understand this sentiment that for some businesses, survival is critical now. But from an environmental perspective, the clock is ticking — we don't have much time. In addition, cutting carbon has an immediate bottom-line effect as costs drop, and a medium-term benefit for the brand.”

The British Retail Consortium agrees, saying that many retailers remain interested in green initiatives not only because of the cost savings, but also because making such commitments helps to differentiate them from competitors. Retailers have already surpassed a voluntary target to reduce the use of carrier bags by 25 per cent and aim to cut this by 50 per cent by the end of May.

Larger companies have an added impetus to look at reducing their carbon footprint, as new rules next year — which will affect the biggest 5,000 companies — will require businesses to buy carbon allowances to offset their emissions. Those that have taken early action will have a head start. But there seems to be a stumbling block in how businesses can let their customers know about the good work that they are doing to curb carbon. More than two thirds of consumers are hazy about which companies are environmentally responsible but this suggests that firms that are able to relay clearly their message to the public will be in pole position to attract shoppers.

Carbon Trust believes that it can help by informing customers about the good work companies are doing. “When companies are granted the standard, they can use a logo in all their marketing which makes it clear that they are working towards cutting emissions,” Mr Morrison said.

B&Q has gone one step further at its new flagship store in New Malden, southwest London. Visitors sipping a coffee in the café can look through glass panels to admire the solar panels and wind turbine that are helping to cut the store's carbon emissions.

The Japan-based electronics firm agreed to pay a $31 million fine as part of its deal with the U.S. Justice Department.

Three other major producers of liquid crystal display panels have already admitted their involvement in price-fixing.

Hitachi admitted to fixing prices of the screens sold to Dell, Inc. for use in desktop monitors and notebook computers from 2001 to 2004.

LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. struck similar plea agreements last year relating to their sales of glass display screens for laptop computers, cellphones, and new TVs.

They earn millions and the extent of their diva-esque demands is often mind boggling. But tomorrow, Robbie Williams, KT Tunstall and the members of Radiohead will join a group of high-profile musicians to protest at how badly they are treated by record companies and music streaming websites like YouTube.

The inaugural meeting of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which will be held behind closed doors at a secret West End venue is aimed at giving famous names a greater say in how music industry contracts are struck in an increasingly opaque digital age.

The FAC, which describes itself as a “coalition, not a union”, has been organised by Billy Bragg, the veteran protest singer, Dave Rowntree, the Blur drummer turned Labour Party candidate, and Radiohead, who walked out of a deal with EMI to release their last album In Rainbows directly over the internet.

It says it does not seek to compete with the Musicians Unions and aims to represent the famous names in the business - the so-called “featured artists” who appear on the covers of CDs and are named as those behind the songs - who generate an estimated 95 per cent of industry revenues.

But the timing of its birth is pertinent, coming as YouTube prepares to block thousands of music videos on its site amid a dispute over the royalties.

“Google, YouTube’s owner is a company that makes billions in profits; we think they should be paying artist royalties from the advertising revenue they make,” Billy Bragg told The Times. “A dispute like this illustrates the needs for the creation of the Featured Artists Coalition, so we have have a voice and the public understand that sites like Google should be paying for music.”

The stars complain that performers often do not receive any royalties from digital music deals - struck on confidential terms none of the artists understand - and that music companies unfairly restrict creative expression by hanging on to copyright for up to 50 years.

Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, said: “The music companies did a deal with Nokia recently, so they could launch phones with access to all sorts of music. We think they all received advances from Nokia, but nobody is saying who got what - and we think some of that money should go to the artists.”

Another target of complaints is MySpace, the social networking website owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times. Billy Bragg said: “I don’t know how much money MySpace makes from advertising, but we don’t receive any royalties from it. They are not putting any money back into content.”

Musicians’ pages on MySpace are categorised by the company as a “promotional platform” and a result the site does not believe it has to pay a royalty of the kind that falls due whenever a song is played on radio, live, or on a stereo in a shop, bar or restaurant. Royalties are paid on a separate MySpace music downloading service, which only operates in the US.

Under pressure from rampant illegal downloading, record companies are increasingly striking new kinds of digital music deals, in which they license their entire catalogues to internet providers who are willing to charge their customers a fee.

Last year, Nokia offered a pay-as-you-go mobile, priced at £129.99, which also gave owners the right to download and keep any song recorded on one of the four major labels, Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI.

The performers believe that only by representing themselves will they be taken seriously by the music industry - who they accuse of ignoring their managers - digital music companies such as Nokia and MySpace and politicians. “To get the attention of these people we need somebody like Robbie Williams on board,” Bragg said.

Complaints about copyright are also expected to dominate, amid concerns that record companies insist on keeping ownership of songs for the entire fifty year period they remain under copyright. “It’s like taking out a mortgage on a house, paying off the mortgage and you still don’t end up owning the house,” O’Brien said.

However, there are signs that the effort at collective action is not impressing the record companies. One senior industry executive, who asked not to be named, said: “I don’t know if the the industry needs another lobby group; there are already plenty out there. We need to all pull together here.”

Other attendees are expected to include singer-songwriter Kate Nash, the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and Limahl the former frontman of Kajagoogoo. But to form a plan of action will require agreement from a string of famous names who are not used to collective action. “We’ll have to see how it goes,” O’Brien said. “It could all end up in a great big ruck.”

Pioneer will close its long-standing flat-screen television business by March 2010 as it struggles with huge losses amid plunging consumer sales. Despite being an early player in the flat screen arena, the Japanese company always struggled to grasp a large share of the market and recently began making a loss in this area.

On February 12, 2009 a small announcement appeared on the Pioneer website stating that the company would “concentrate its investments and commercial efforts” on car electronics, navigation, audio AV and pro-DJ products.

Michiko Kadoi, Pioneer spokeswoman, was quoted on the BBC website as saying: “Since the US financial crisis and ensuring global downturn, our sales of car electronics products and flat-screen TVs plunged worldwide”.

“We were severely hit by battered consumer sentiment.”

Pioneer also announced it is to cut a further 10,000 jobs and warned it expected to report an annual loss of 130 billion yen (€1.1 billion).

Pure has announced that its "Highway" product, an in-car DAB adaptor, was the second best selling car audio product overall in 2008.

Citing data from Gfk, Pure says the little gizmo "transformed" the 2008 in-car DAB market by increasing it by over 300% in comparison to 2007.

"We are delighted that Highway has had such an impact on the car audio market in 2008, and all this through our traditional electrical retail channels and independents, not using any major specialist car accessory retailer", says Paul Smith, general manager of Pure.

"These positive sales show that there is clear consumer demand for DAB in the car and we encourage car manufacturers to offer the technology as standard to meet that demand".

Pure's Highway is available now at a retail price of £79.99.

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic has announced it is to cut 15,000 jobs by March 2010. Half of the job losses will come in Japan, with the rest from international workforce reductions. Panasonic expects to make a net loss of 380bn yen (£2.9bn) for the financial year to 31 March. The company has been hit by a stronger yen and falling sales during the worldwide economic downturn.

Jobs announced today he's stepping down from day-to-day management of Apple until June while he copes with a health problem he called "more complicated than I originally thought."

The move came on the heels of months of speculation on Mr. Jobs' health, fueled by gaunt public appearances, his decision to pull out of the keynote for the MacWorld Expo last week and the company's vague admission last week that Jobs had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance."

The fear that this signaled a return of the pancreatic cancer he was treated for in 2004 reverberated among Apple faithful, shareholders and the economy of ancillary businesses built around Apple's revolutionary products and services.

Mr. Jobs led a turnaround at Apple starting when he returned in 1996, transforming it from a struggling maker of niche personal computers into a mainstream lifestyle brand that represents the best of whatever category it enters, from personal computers to phones to music players.

Along the way, the Steve Jobs and Apple brands became synonymous in a unique way in American business. Mr. Jobs is to Apple what Richard Branson is to Virgin, Jay Chiat to TBWA/Chiat/Day or perhaps Jack Welch to General Electric.

The question is, whether in the 12 years since he returned to Apple, has a culture been built there that can survive him? "The good news for the Apple brand is the one thing he has done is created an organization to deliver Apple-ness brilliantly," said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York City office branding firm Landor Associates.

One could look at Mr. Jobs' other revolutionary company, Pixar Animation Studios, which has maintained its uniqueness after Mr. Jobs even after it was absorbed into the Walt Disney Co. Part of that was due to the Pixar creative team, led by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter.

By most accounts, Apple has that team in place and Mr. Jobs' role is that of an editor, parsing the ideas brought to him by his team. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook has led the company before, during Mr. Jobs' treatment for cancer; Jonathan Ive is the designer behind Apple products; and marketing director Phillip Schiller took Mr. Jobs' place delivering the keynote at the MacWorld Expo.

One way to prepare for Apple sans Mr. Jobs would be to bring some of these execs, especially Mr. Ive, who is responsible for the look and feel of the devices, to the fore.

"Certainly it would have been interesting to learn a bit more about the chief of design," said David Murphy, co-president and director of brand innovation at Minneapolis-based Barrie D'Rozario Murphy. "It would have added more depth and texture to the Apple brand because he and his teams and Steve Jobs have created some beautiful products."

For the better part of 12 years, Apple has benefited from Mr. Jobs' instincts, his ability to communicate and his iconic status. Now they're coping with the downside of having an iconic leader: Someday, they won't be around.

"Eventually all leaders leave and its incumbent upon every company to make sure that all key stakeholders understand the quality and depth of the team behind them," said Michael Kempner, CEO of Interpublic Group of Cos.' PR shop MWW Group. "Yet, we don't know who they are because they have been kept hidden for so many years."

Most believe that if Mr. Jobs' absence is indeed just six months, there might be impact to the stock, but no impact to the brand. "If anything, it stirs up more buzz about him and the company and his role at the company, maybe to the benefit of the brand, but to the detriment of the stock," said Andrew Murphy, analyst at Piper Jaffray. Mr. Murphy said Apple has had a succession plan for some time, but hasn't made it public.

But Apple will have a tougher time if Mr. Jobs' health forces him out of the company permanently. "If he were to leave it would be very complicated; Apple has the most unique, compelling, consistent voice of any company," said Alan Siegel, founder of branding firm Siegel & Gale.

"There's a underlying sense amongst some of us in the Apple community that Jobs may never return as the company's CEO, and that he's slowly saying his goodbyes," said Kasper Jade, editor of Appleinsider.com.

Apple has shown its brand can survive a product that bombs, such as Apple TV, but all eyes will be on the next few product rollouts, without Mr. Jobs. That will be the most important signal as to whether there can be an Apple without Steve Jobs. Said Mr. Adamson: "The next two or three product launches will be critical -- will they have the Jobs magic?"

Dolby is also targeting game developers to encode matrix height information into their surround-sound mixes, said Craig Eggers, Dolby’s senior manager for CE partner marketing. “We could do it in music and movie mixes, too,” he added.

Adding a vertical component to horizontal soundfields adds more realism and airiness to movie soundtracks and games, the companies contend. The technologies would elevate the sounds of hovering helicopters in games and movies, and in music videos, add more “depth, dimension and presence,” said Eggers. Rain would seem to be falling on a listener’s roof. Planes flying overhead will actually sound as if they’re flying overhead rather than through a listener sitting on the couch, said DTS marketing VP Tom Dixon.

Incorporating height information in a surround mix would enable game developers to incorporate height effects that would more precisely track visual game play than post-processing would, Dolby’s Eggers noted. DTS, however, has no plans for now to market its technology for encoding in games and other source material, said spokesman Anthony Watkins.

Dolby’s technology is Dolby Pro Logic IIz, which adds two front height channels to typical 5.1- and 7.1-channel home theater configurations to create surround systems with up to 9.1 channels. Dolby’s Eggers said IIz-equipped AV receivers will be available “very soon,” with the first arriving before CEDIA. At the show, Dolby displayed a prototype Dolby Pro Logic IIz 7.1-channel AV receiver from Onkyo.

For its part, DTS demonstrated a new technology that adds two front height and two additional horizontal-plane surround channels to create a soundfield with up to 11.1 channels. The technology, in the Neo family but as yet unnamed, can also be used to create only the two height channels. “The algorithm is ready,” and the first AVRs with the technology could appear late this year or early next, said DTS’s Dixon.

Dolby chose to focus on front-height channels rather than add additional surround channels or back-height channels because “it’s easier to localize sounds in front of you,” Eggers claimed.

Both technologies could be incorporated into chips already used in low- to high-priced AVRs, both companies said. “MIPs are not an issue these days,” DTS’s Dixon said. “If a receiver has [losslessly compressed] DTS HD Master, it can do Neo X.” During CES, an AVR with DTS HD Master and Dolby TrueHD was announced by Pioneer at a suggested $299.

Many existing AVRs and home theater preamp processors already incorporate enough amplifier channels to support the technologies, both companies noted. Nine-channel AVRs often use four amplifier channels to biamplify the front left-right speakers or to drive two speaker pairs in a multiroom application. Two of those amps could be redirected to drive a pair of height speakers in a system with seven horizontal-plane channels, Dolby said. Denon offers a 9.3-channel home theater preamp processor, and Pioneer offers a 10-channel AVR. Yamaha’s flagship 11-channel AVR already supports two front height and two rear height channels using proprietary Yamaha technology.

To add height channels, the Dolby and DTS technologies identify nondirectional decorrelated sounds in the surround mix process them as left- and right-height channels. DTS’s version also adds some correlated directional information to the height channels, said senior R&D VP Paul Smith.

In an 11.1-channel DTS setup, the left and right height speakers would be placed above the left and right main speakers. The distance between a height speaker and main speaker would be the same as the distance between the main speaker and center-channel speaker, said Smith. The six surround speakers would be arrayed like this: On the right, one speaker would be placed at 90 degrees from the listener, with another at 120 degrees and the third at 150 degrees. The left-side surrounds would be likewise positioned.

Apple Inc. unveiled significant pricing and copyright changes to its iTunes Store, moves by the dominant online music seller that could spur similar action across the industry.

The changes, announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco Tuesday, include a new three-tiered pricing plan for songs, instead of the 99-cents fixed price Apple has used almost exclusively. Apple also said it will drop copy protection from all of the songs in its digital store.

The changes were announced by Apple marketing chief Philip Schiller rather than by Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who has made the keynote speech at Macworld every year since 1997. Last month, Apple said Mr. Jobs wouldn't appear at the event because the company was cutting back on trade shows and would withdraw from Macworld after this year. On Monday, Mr. Jobs disclosed he was treating a "hormonal imbalance" that caused him to lose weight.

Some of Apple's moves appear to be a response in part to shifts in the digital-music market. Growth in paid downloads slowed significantly in 2008, rising 27%, compared with a 45% increase a year earlier, according to Nielsen Co.'s SoundScan service.

New online-music rivals have also emerged, including Amazon.com Inc., which sells many songs at a cheaper price than iTunes and without copy protection, giving users more freedom with the songs they have purchased.

The Cupertino, Calif., company declined to comment on why it was making changes to its iTunes Store now beyond that it thinks "it's great for customers."

The moves by Apple could prompt others in the online music industry to also explore new ways to sell music. Apple last year surpassed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as the world's largest music retailer. Digital-music retailers in the U.S. sold more than one billion songs in 2008. Apple said it has sold six billion songs since the iTunes Store launched in 2003.

Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Pali Research, said that while he expected the changes to benefit consumers, it was unclear whether the moves would significantly boost sales. "The bigger issue is that the number of people buying music online is not big enough," he said.

Under Apple's new pricing plan that will take effect in April, Mr. Schiller said songs will cost 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29. He said the "vast majority" of the songs will cost 69 cents, though people familiar with the matter said the most sought-after songs -- which generate most of the sales on the service -- will likely cost $1.29 as both Apple and the major record labels try to boost revenue growth. Wholesale prices charged by the record labels are likely to change to reflect the new price points; spokespeople for Apple and major record labels declined to discuss their agreements.

Apple also said it is dropping digital rights management, or copy protection, from eight million songs in its catalog effective immediately, and from the remaining two million in its catalog by the end of March.

Apple's DRM has made it complicated for iTunes customers to use competitors' products, like SanDisk Corp. music players or Microsoft Corp.'s Zune. Among the limits imposed by the software locks, it is difficult or impossible to play songs purchased from the iTunes Store on devices other than the iPod or iPhone.

Apple already sells songs from some record labels, including EMI Group Ltd. and many independent labels, without DRM. Now it is moving to selling everything, including the catalogs of the other three major labels -- Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp. -- the same way.

Users can also pay 30 cents a song to upgrade previously purchased songs in their iTunes library to a DRM-free version.

Starting Tuesday, Apple said iPhone 3G owners will also be able to download songs from the iTunes Store via their cellular networks instead of having to connect to a wireless Internet network. The company said the price, selection and quality of the songs would be the same as they are online.

Apple also unveiled a 17-inch version of the MacBook Pro laptop computer it introduced last October. As part of the computer, Apple said it has developed a new thin and light battery that provides up to eight hours of battery life. The company also unveiled a new version of its iLife media software, which now includes GoogleInc.'s Google Maps to help organize photos by location

The presents have been unwrapped, the tree taken down. And Santa still hasn't brought you that Wii.