Apple plans mystery "product transition" before September's end

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/21/apple_plans_mystery_product_transition_before_septembers_end.html

by Alex3917 • 18 years ago

30 10 18 years ago

prospero3• 18 years ago

An Atom-based laptop, maybe? I don't think that the Eee or Wind are proper competitors, but even the most expensive versions cost around half what a basic MacBook costs. People are willing to forgive a lot for that sort of price differential.

It's nice to dream, anyways.

Alex39172• 18 years ago

Two assumptions:

A) The profit margin will stay at 35% until this new product is released.

b) This product won't be announced until August 19th at the earliest.

That means if the plan is to have a 30% unit margin at the end of the quarter, they are going to have something like a 25% margin for the second half of the quarter. Now since they are reducing the margin, we know they are planning to increase the volume. An atom laptop, while it would be cool, just doesn't have the potential to move several million units within the first month, which is roughly what it would take to lower the margins by that much. In fact, there is literally no new product that Apple could introduce that would sell enough units within the first month to lower the per unit margins by 10%. So the change must involve some existing product.

I think there are two realistic options here. First, they just reduce plain reduce the price of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. A real possibility. Second, they add an expensive component to one of their existing products. While Blueray or DDR3 would cost enough to make the numbers add up, there is no way either of those would generate enough excitement to create the extra volume Apple is looking for. So I think if they add a new component to an existing product, the only real option is SSD. Either they make SSD standard in all MacBooks, or else they replace the normal iPod with an iPod touch with way more SSD than it currently has. At least to my thinking, either a price cut or SSD are the only ways I can see the numbers adding up for Q4.

prospero3• 18 years ago

Granted, there are bound to be other price reductions, but the article makes explicit mention of a new product. Also, unless they plan to take a significant loss on the SSDs, I don't see how making them standard will make their hardware more price competitive.

The Atom laptop is a total shot in the dark, and is likely wrong, but it seems like there must be something more significant in the pipeline.

gojomo• 18 years ago

Wild guesses:

* Bigger-but-still-pretty-cheap iPod Touch -- falling somewhere between today's 'TechCrunch Tablet' and the foldable OLPC dual screen [1]. Perhaps cheap because of some sort of non-AT&T carrier subsidy (Sprint/Verizon?) or built-in adware (Google).

* A true Apple TV -- big screen flat TVs with Mac innards. (I thought this was due earlier this year. [2])

* Some massive Mac/iPod/iPhone 'switcher' cross-promotion -- like rebates or bounties on your old Windows/PC units when you go fully Apple.

* Something which brings MacOS to the legacy PC world -- not quite licensed clones like the 90s Power Computing experiment, but maybe a VMWare MacOS appliance that runs on PCs, or a MacOS lite, providing a way to siphon off even more of the business and low-end markets.

* The iSteve, a digital upload of Steve Jobs onto a custom "Go Chip" created by Apple's new PA Semi subsidiary, giving Apple an immortal CEO and an early lead in the posthuman platform race.

[1] http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/05/20/new-olpc-revealed-olpc-...

[2] http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2008/01/appletv-thats-really-tv-a...

pavelludiq• 18 years ago

If they mass produce Steve Jobs clones, i will buy one, or two. Just think of the uses. Cheap business consulting from an immortal entity in a microchip, thats a killer app for the CEO market :D

sarosh• 18 years ago

I bet Apple would also make quite a bit of cash from support. The Genius Bar would probably have to be renamed though....

czstrong• 18 years ago

My guess is a transition to only iPod touch models with much larger storage capacities. The increase in memory will increase the cost but Apple will likely sell it at price points comparable to what the large capacity ones are now. This would lead to the mentioned decreased margins. Also sales of these would likely be high to help make up for the decreased margins, especially around the holiday shopping time.

Apple is giving away the old touches now with the purchase of a macbook. They also like to announce iPods at the beginning of the fourth quarter to capitalize on the holiday shopping.

This transition seems like one they could be referring to.

Apple plans mystery "product transition" before September's end

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