Will Apple offer a MacBook under $1000? Piper Jaffrey analyst says it’s likely
By Opal Tribble
Analysts and investors were all abuzz after Apple’s Q3 earnings call. During the call Apple guided its companies gross margin down to 31.5 percent for the quarter ending September. Say what? As if that wasn’t enough to catch investors and analysts off guard they dropped the companies gross margin to 30 percent for the entire 2009 fiscal year.
Naturally this news sparked curiosity. What is Apple planning? What’s the reason for profits going down? During the call CFO Peter Oppenheimer continually referred to “future product transitions that I can’t discuss at this time.” Also, Oppenheimer discussed the lowering of the iPod shuffle from $79 to $49. Oppenheimer said, “We’re very happy with the elasticity we’ve seen, and think the tradeoff between volume and price was a good one.” It seems obvious what Apple is planning to do. Apple will be lowering the prices of a few of its products and making it up in volume.
Apple Insider reported that Piper Jaffrey analyst, Gene Munster, believes that not only will Apple be introducing redesigned MacBooks, it will also lower the price from $1,099 to $999. An upgrade for the MacBook seems imminent. One only has to look at the other Macs in Apples lineup to see some similarities (aluminum shell.)
Don’t want a MacBook? Gene Munster also mentioned the possibility of moving the MacBook Pro down from $1,999 to around $1,799. That would be great news. I’m waiting for the updated MacBook Pro to hit the scene a drop along with my education discount would really lower my total price on a customized MacBook Pro.
Apple has been steadily gaining momentum, iTunes is the number one music retailer in the USA. Many of its Mac computers have received prestigious awards. When it comes to higher education they beat out Dell to snag the number one position.
Presently, Apple is the number one seller of computers over $1000. If you check out Apple’s lineup most of its computers fall into this category. The next move would seem to make Macs more appealing to a larger audience. One of the ways of doing this is cutting the price, just like the iPhone 3G. I think we’ll see a price cut with all the Macs that Apple sells. Will Apple ever make computers in the $400 range? I highly doubt it, but I do think a nice cut off the price will make even more people, who are turned off by the price, consider purchasing a Mac.
The next time Steve Jobs gives us the “one more thing” speech he will be letting us know about that Mac computers will be getting a price cut.
Related:
Stumble It!
Entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 8:23 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Opal Tribble.
August 25th, 2008
[…] iPod touch users won’t need to pay for that upgrade. We should also see a price cut in the iPod devices. If the claims are accurate, it looks like the analysts were on the money when they stated that […]
August 25th, 2008
[…] iPod touch users won’t need to pay for that upgrade. We should also see a price cut in the iPod devices. If the claims are accurate, it looks like the analysts were on the money when they stated that […]