It seems business - the downloading business - is good for Apple. So good in fact that it went out and bought a Tier IV data center that was once made for MCI in 2001. With the telecom’s problems and all, the data center was never used and at what usually costs $1,200 a square foot (and you thought Silicon Valley homes where expensive!), Apple got it at a steal for only $450 a square foot. But why would Apple need such an advanced data center? Sure, iTunes hit one billion downloads but the music files and small videos iTunes offers does not require the power of a Tier IV facility, the highest and most top grade of data centers.

Now, what does need that kind of power is bigger packages and a great demand for those packages. This purchase most likely plays right into tomorrow’s big announcement that had “fun” peppered in the invites. Many speculate it could be a new iPod video, a new Mac mini, or maybe the iBook. But it’s doubtful it’s any of those things since downloading movies and watching them is a lot more fun. Indeed, plopping such an amount of cash on such a big pipe of bandwidth would completely make sense for such a reason. With the recent Pixar buyout from Disney and Steve’s new board member status, that would add to the argument that this purchase was for movie downloads.

We’ll all know tomorrow what the big announcement is and if this data center plays into it, but even if it doesn’t, Apple obviously sees itself more and more as a service provider and what effect that will have on its hardware division is something for later commentary.

[tags]itunes,data center,purchase,movie downloads[/tags]