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[First of all, in the supremely unlikely event you are reading this thinking about getting a stock tip, I am -- in no way -- a financial analyst or financial professional of any sort.]
 
Last Wednesday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz had an open forum for employees at the company's Seattle headquarters. This meeting was the day after 1000 jobs were cut at the company through layoffs and closing open headcount, and directly after the quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts. During his opening remarks before taking Q&A from employees, Schultz offered the opinion that Starbucks could be the next Apple. As I heard it, this was meant two-fold: first from a stock market valuation perspective and from a game-changing, corporate icon perspective. From a stock performance perspective, employees and shareholders are undoubtedly hoping that Schultz is right in thinking his company can mirror Apple's. To paraphrase what he said, the vultures were circling Apple not long ago, especially on Wall Street. The Apple Store idea was criticized and, generally speaking, their products had a small, though fiercely loyal audience, but wouldn't ever grow to the mainstream.
 
So much for expert predictions.
 
Since its launch on October 21, 2001, the iPod broke open the then-nascent category of portable MP3 players. More than 140 million iPods have been sold to date. Ditto the iTunes store which - arguably - single-handedly has led to a staggering drop in CD sales. Oh, and the Apple stores? To the best of my knowledge, I think they're still around.
 
The iPod has become the gateway drug, erm, product intro to Apple for most. And even though new electronic gadgets (laptop, mobile phone, etc) are a considered purchase, the opportunity for Apple is obviously vast. The mobile/PDA market is much more mature and trickier to navigate than the MP3 player market, but Apple has jumped into the deep end, and taken in a few gulps of water along with its strong kick. They may never make a serious dent in the desktop or laptop markets but any incremental inroads will be icing on the cake of their handheld (or clip-on or downloaded) sales.
 
What can Starbucks learn from Apple? And is Apple even the right model to emulate? Like Apple, Starbucks has its own fiercely loyal customer base. In the face of general mocking far and wide, people now order coffee and espresso drinks in sizes other than "small," "medium" or "large." As with Apple's central role the portable MP3 player market, Starbucks brought premium coffee and espresso and the notion of coffeehouse culture to mainstream America (and beyond).
 
With more than 15,000 stores, the math is easy to figure that tens of millions of people visit a Starbucks daily. So it seems the question is less one of finding the gateway product that will introduce millions of new customers to the brand who had limited prior exposure. (Just in case though, Starbucks has launched Vivanno, a smoothie drink, and Sorbetto, a primarily shaved ice beverage.) Please, is anyone unfamiliar with Starbucks? But instead, the comapny should focus on increasing the incremental opportunities. Make the once-a-week visitor come twice, make the morning coffee regular visit in the afternoon, sell more items from the pastry case or brewing equipment displays, etc.
 
The drive to reenergize the coffeehouse culture feels like the right one. The iPod, much as I use mine, is a solitary pursuit. See my white headphone cord, I'm in my own sonic world. The coffeehouse encourages conversation and engagement, beginning with the customer and barista interaction, and can extend to friends, family, colleagues, the strangers in line with you. Conversation leads to community that in turn can lead to loyalty/brand love which should equate to frequency and revenue. Community is a popular word around Starbucks today. The customer feedback site My Starbucks Idea has been a solid first step in this direction as are other efforts like the new volunteer initiative, V2V.

Starbucks should admire Apple; many companies do. But in terms of the King of Joe getting its mojo back and encouraging the purchase of mo' joe , it should focus less on creating the next the faux Italian drink name or logo iteration, and more on starting, fostering and continuing the conversation with and among its customers.