Apple's Tuesday announcements impacted three key areas, according to Blackfriars Communications' Carl Howe, who published a column at Seeking Alpha explaining that "even though the broad strokes were expected, some of the details of the actual announcements will have ripple effects into other parts of the industry."

First, he said, "Microsoft's Robbie Bach is probably spending this week throwing darts at Steve Jobs' photo, since he just added several million dollars of red ink to Robbie's launch plans," thanks to Apple's move to the US$249 price point for the 30GB iPod. Microsoft's Zune is rumored to have a $299 price, which Mr. Howe explained is now "a non-starter. And since Microsoft is not the leader but the challenger in this market, Zune will have be be priced less than Apple's offering to get any traction."

Second, the $299 price for Apple's upcoming iTV product "also whacked TiVO's Series3 video recorder," which launched this week with a $799 tag. While iTV won't offer all of TiVO's functionality, "the decision to stick with TiVO may be a lot tougher to make," Mr. Howe said. "And at the very least, Apple's pre-announcement will put a chill on the DVR market over the Christmas selling season and hurt TiVO's pipeline of customers."

Finally, while many have seen the iTV as Apple's foray into the living room, Mr. Howe doesn't look at it as the place where the company will end up, since the device "is really a video Airport Express, probably with 802.11n wireless networking." He thinks CEO Steve Jobs showed it off "to demonstrate the completeness of his vision for delivering movies to the living room, not to give away his living room strategy," adding that he sees Apple eventually incorporating such technology into TVs themselves.

"The fact that Apple didn't fire a shot across the bow of TV makers like Sony and Matsushita yesterday doesn't mean that it only intends to be a set-top box maker," Mr. Howe wrote. "It only means that Apple doesn't have all the pieces in place to completely blow people away -- yet."