

Apple plans mystery "product transition" before September's end - Alex3917
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/21/apple_plans_mystery_product_transition_before_septembers_end.html

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czstrong
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.

------
gojomo
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-...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/05/20/new-olpc-revealed-olpc-dual-
screen/)

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

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

------
prospero
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.

~~~
Alex3917
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.

~~~
prospero
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.

~~~
evgen
Actually, the conf call mentioned a "product transition", not a new product.
They are changing something in their existing lineup, not adding a new product
to the lineup.

~~~
prospero
From the article: _The new, unnamed product will continue to have
"technologies and features that others can't match," according to the CFO._

I took that to mean that it's entirely new, but it is a press release, so
maybe they're talking about some minor change like it's something new and
wonderful.

