If you're into the business side of gaming, you might be interested in this piece of news: in BusinessWeek's list of The World's Most Innovative Companies, Microsoft ranked above its competitors in the video game industry, Nintendo and Sony. Guess who topped the list? Apple. (Cue whooping from Mac users.) Details in the full article.

Although it may not be apparent, Apple isn't reeling in major profits on any of the Apple TV units they sell. Literally. According to Business Week, research firm iSuppli purchased a unit for US$ 299 and took it apart piece by piece. What they found was that the seemingly pricey Apple TV tag wasn't a Benjamin apart from the total of its parts.

An Apple TV's parts, when broken down and arranged quite neatly, has been found to cost no more than US$ 237 all in all. That's just US$ 62 from the retail price tag (a 20% gross profit margin), although it doesn't include administrative, marketing and production costs.

That's a big leap from most of Apple's 50% gross profit margins for products not related to its consumer computer solutions. Analyst Andrew Rassweiler of iSuppli remarked, "This is certainly a departure for Apple, or at least it's approaching a departure."

"We made some very aggressive assumptions with this device, and by that I mean we assumed low prices on the components," added Rassweiler. When Apple's Steve Jobs said that the Apple TV is a hobby, he probably wasn't joking at all. It may have been more convincing, though, if there were tears.

A lot of people in the gaming circuit have already made up their minds on the question of which gaming company is the most innovative of them all. However, it's a different take in the eyes of business executives around the world as Business Week conducted a survey on which companies did the most to bring new products that made sense to consumers.

Apple led the bunch with a comfortable margin over second-placer Google. As far as game-related enterprises are concerned, Microsoft led the way. It was fifth on the overall standings by virtue of software advances. Amazingly, there was no mention of games in the explanation.

Sony was at the tenth spot powered by its new PlayStation 3 console.The magazine says that it took gaming technology to the next level by transforming the game system series into a gateway to a virtual world. The reference was probably aimed at the PlayStation Home system, but hey, hasn't that been done by Second Life and Miis by Nintendo already?

Nintendo lagged behind at the 39th spot with its independence from sequels and its ability to appeal to all age groups.Yes, we know what you're thinking. Go ahead and post them in the comments section.

Let's face it, Apple has never been a giant presence when it comes to gaming, but things are definitely starting to look up. The iPhone's announcement in January has also started speculation about whether or not it will be able to play games.

While Apple has yet to reveal any details regarding their plans for gaming on the iPhone, Business Week reports that the company is currently in talks with a few well-known game developers and publishers.

According to Business Week, Mitch Lasky, senior vice-president of EA Mobile, says his company is discussing plans for games on the phone. "We have been talking to Apple about games on (the iPhone)," Lasky says. "We see a lot of the technology that we've utilized on the iPod side being incorporated into the iPhone."

Electronic Arts expanded its mobile gaming business through last year's purchase of independent mobile publisher JAMDAT Mobile, later rebranded as EA Mobile.

It's old news that the people at iTunes have been thinking about making movies into another staple of iTunes goodness. We even mentioned a rumor about the iTunes selling movies to the public.

Well, let's make it official then. According to Business Week, Apple and iTunes are coming out with a movie-selling service, with an official announcement halfway through this month.

Their prices are supposed to be slated at $14.99 for new movies, and $9.99 for older ones. They might even make a new iPod to make the feature even more enticing to consumers, so it sounds like a good sell.

There's only one problem. Wal-Mart is not happy with these developments. As one of the largest sellers of DVDs in America, they stand to take a significant hit in revenue if this spreads, so there seems to be a tug-of-war going on right now to keep Wal-Mart pleased and selling Apple goods while getting iTunes out with a movie-selling function.

Keep checking QJ for more info as we have them.

If you ask Seagate, news of the impending death of hard drives (caused by the impending domination of NAND-type flash memory chips) is grossly exaggerated. Otherwise, the company wouldn't have announced its big plan for 2007, which includes 60 to 120GB drives for handheld video devices such as Apple's iPod video.

In an interview with Business Week, Seagate expressed faith in hard drives despite prediction that HD technology will give way to high-capacity flash memory. The company cited that the big three NAND flash memory makers in the world (Samsung, SanDisk, and Toshiba) are investing big money on their respective disk-drive business with no plans of shelving them .

Seagate believes HD will be around for a long time because they are cheaper. Seagate CEO William Watkins said, "It will be a price-per-gigabyte battle...if they can make a 4-GB for $5, then it's $20 for 32 GB, and $40 for 64 GB. On the other hand... when we do a single-platter, 100-GB notebook drive, well it doesn't cost me very much to go to 200 GB. All I have to do is add another platter. It's very cheap for me to go up."

Business Week reported that Apple's brand value went up by 14% last year raising its position in the magazine's Best Global Brand Survey from No. 39th to 41.  According to Business Week, the company continues to be "the style master with its expanded family of iPods and Macs. Its latest hit: the MacBook line of laptops."  Apple's brand equity is currently valued at $9.13 billion.

The annual BusinessWeek/Interbrand rankings measure an elusive but crucial quality known as brand value. This year's list includes Coca-Cola (No.1), Microsoft (No.2) and IBM (No.3). Other brands that made the cut are Motorola, Hyundai, Google, and McDonald's.

It seems as though everyone wants to jump on the Apple bandwagon. Everything labeled as an iPod automatically features that golden Midas touch.

Broadcom is simply one company benefitting from all the attention given to Apple and its popular music players. Broadcom, a company that supplies a decoder chip used in Video iPods, is seeing its stock continue to grow in the wake of the popularity of the new device.

Broadcom Corp. shares surged to a new 52-week high in afternoon trading on Wednesday, boosted by the belief that the company could benefit from video iPod sales, and from heightened demand for video processors.

What is the moral of the story? If Steve Jobs wants to play with you, you would do good in sharing your ball with him. You'll get it back.

[Via, Business Week]