Forget the iPad 2 – here’s Apple’s real genius

Our ace tech reporter and self-proclaimed geek Patrick Stafford was up at 4am this morning so he could watch Steve Jobs unveiling the new iPad 2.

And as a mark of how impressed Pat is, you should all know that he’s already asked for the day off on March 25 – that’s the day the new gadget hits Australian stores.

But while much of the focus is going to be on Apple’s flash new piece of hardware, I think the biggest story out of the event – other than the appearance by the ailing Jobs himself – was a little revelation about the size of Apple’s customer base.

Jobs revealed that Apple now has 200 million accounts with credit card numbers on its books, linked to its various online stores selling music, video, books and, of course, applications.

“Amazon doesn’t publish their numbers. But it’s very likely that this is the most accounts with cards anywhere on the internet,” Jobs said at the presentation.

As I have argued in the past, the real genius of Apple’s product releases over the last decade has been the way it has rolled out marketplaces to accompany its products.

Yes, the iPod was cool, but it worked at its best when you put all your music into your iTunes account and started buying new albums and songs from the iTunes store.

Yes, the iPhone was great, but it worked at its best when you loaded your phone with applications from the App Store.

Yes, the iPad was great, but it was at its best when combined with the App Store and the new iBooks store.

The clever part is that by developing these markets, Apple was able to get multiple revenue streams. It sells its hardware once, but by creating these marketplaces and taking a cut of anything sold by publishing companies, music companies and app developers, it ensured customers would keep the money pouring in.

The marketplaces also work as a brilliant barrier to competition. Even if you are tempted by a rival company’s smartphone or tablet, transferring your music, contacts and other content from your Apple device isn’t easy. And in the case of apps, if you switch to another phone brand, you’ve just taken a big loss.

Those are the reasons why Apple has been able to build a database of 200 million credit cards.

The question I have is this: What could they do with that database in the future?

Clearly, Apple will expand into selling other forms of content – newspaper subscriptions (as seen with Rupert Murdoch’s new publication The Daily) and other forms of micropayments would seem to be obvious targets.

But let’s think bigger. The new iPhone 5 is rumoured to include near field communications technology, which can allow for the phone to be used a payment device – a lot like the cashless “swipe and go” technology Visa is rolling out with some retailers.

Think about it. Before you head out for a day of shopping in the city, you log onto iTunes, transfer cash from your credit card to your Apple account and then head off.

When you go to buy something in a retail store, you simply wave your phone at a store’s terminal/chip reader and the money is transferred out of your Apple Account to the store’s banks account.

That might be a long way away. Apple might not want to go down that path at all. But its 200 million-strong customer database is just ripe for some serious monetising.