Back in June/July Apple had it’s financial 3rd quarter QA with analysts and the media. One item in particular caught my eye and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. In response to a question from Ben Reitzes of UBS regarding margin guidance for the current quarter, Peter Oppenheimer of Apple said:
Ben, we gave you guidance that we have reasonable confidence in achieving. Regarding the gross margin, I have guided it down to 29.5% as a result primarily of three factors. We’re going to run the back-to-school promotion for most of the quarter, a great promotion for the company and brings us each year many new customers, but it is an expensive one. We do expect to see higher commodity costs and I will let Tim comment on that in a moment; and we have some product transitions that I can’t get into.
It was the “product transitions” part that got me. What product transisions could be in the works that they would “guide down” the gross margin? I wasn’t the only one that found it a curious statement. My thought at the time was it had to be iPhone related unless they were drastically reshaping their notebook or desktop lines. BTW, I’m no financial analyst, but I do watch Apple since they’ve been a part of my job for the past 25 years.
With Wednesday’s announcement of the iPod Touch, and the price reduction of the 8MB iPhone/elimination of the 4MB model followed by Thursday’s announcement of the $100 credit for iPhone customers I think it’s failry clear what the Peter meant by “product transition” issues.
My question is not so much the iPod Touch intro or the price reduction/elimination in the iPhone line since Apple would have factored that into their current quarter guidance. It’s the $100 credit for the early adopter iPhone customers that has me thinking, was the entire “mea culpa” planned? I’m not a conspiracy theorist at heart but it does make me go “hummmm…..”
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