As the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas winds down to lackluster reviews, Apple is expected to grab the spotlight with an ultra-slim laptop computer and online movie rentals at its biggest annual show next week.

The new products are seen more as enhancements to Apple's current offerings rather than ones that pack the 'wow factor' of last year's star attraction, the iPhone.

Next week's annual Macworld event in San Francisco is the favourite venue of Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs to roll out new products and chart the company's course for the year.

His showman-like pronouncements also increasingly set the agenda for the computer and electronics industries, and have in recent years overshadowed CES, held in Las Vegas around the same time.

Apple gives no hint of what will be announced, so guessing what Jobs has up sleeve is a favourite pastime of analysts and industry executives.

Analysts expect a computer half as thick as Apple's current MacBook lineup, but using flash memory chips like those found in its iPod music players rather than a hard drive.

'The energy seems to be around a smaller-form-factor laptop computer,' said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester, a market research firm.

Notebooks have been one of Apple's strongest segments. In its fourth fiscal quarter ended last September, the company sold 1.34 million MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, up 37 percent from a year earlier.-Reuters