“It took us some [time to get a handle on] everything, but it seems that there are [very little stock] of any Apple products in Europe! It [has] never happened before: networks between the European distributors for Apple and the local AppleCenters are almost empty. Beside some eMacs and PowerBooks, there [are] no stocks from the Powermac G5 to the Mac mini, the same for the iBook and the of course the iPod. Knowing that the Chinese New-Year is not in September, that usually [product stocks] are high after an Apple Event such as the Paris AppleExpo, and that September is the end of a financial quarter, one can seriously ask what’s going on… In the past Apple has never [renewed] its entire products portfolio at once,” MacBidouille reports.
Full article here.
Finally I win something. First.
Screw up in distribution perhaps? Apple Europe seems to have a high turn over of personel.
Ach du lieber!
Ach du lieber = We deliver
Looks like I got first post again. Whew!
There is a more logical explaination – it’s the end of Apple’s fiscal year.
With analysts giving or taking away hudreds of millions of dollars worth of equity in AAPL for a single penny of quarterly earnings meeting or beating a target, AAPL is keenly aware that they must do EVERYTHING right to keep the stock at a PE of near-40.
So, by constraining the product supply chain at the end of the last month in the last quarter of the fiscal year, Apple gets to state (accurately) a lower $ of goods in warehouses, which makes the numers (accurately) looks even better.
If come the first week of October supply doesn’t get far looser we should revisit the “new product line” theory.
MDN word: feed
I still want my flying car! (age is showing)
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(. . .and more cowbell)
Eric24601 can´t read Deutch.
Ach du lieber = oh my goodness.
This all just sounds like somebody took the eye off the ball. (Too many people working on ipod stuff???) Or a problem with all the apple retailers and apple…plus how would the guy know? What´s his source of info?
Amazon Germany has no waiting, 24 hour delivery for Power macs, same with macmini. iMacs are 1-2 day delivery.
What pipeline delivery problem??? Amazon has no laptops, but they haven´t sold them in a long time.
In Germany there are so few places where one can get an Apple computer who would notice???
Isn’t that what they’ve done in the past before end of financial quarter? Dry up stocks in order to report very low stocks on their financials?
Don’t know if it is true, but if it is it is not the first time it has happened.
more cowbell?
OMG i think i just peed my pants laughing so hard.
now, we need more will “i’m a porn star” ferrell-isms and the world will be a happier place!
I heard over at thinksecret about a G6 or something. Oh yeah and an iPod that does video. Coool.
i’ve been told by someone in the know that Oct. 12th will be a significant date for Apple. This was accompanied with the advice to hold off on buying a nano until then.
Make of it what you will …
Bring on the Intel macs
Me’s right – if the numbers are still low in ten-fourteen days, then maybe. Unless of course there is an announcement between now and then.
Anybody remember about four years ago when the stock tanked? That was because they let their inventories get too high and Wall Street gave AAPL a spanking. My ass still hurts from that one.
I still say that Steve was intentionally being ultra conservative when he announced the June 2006 date for the first Intel Macs. He’s going to surprise everyone by releasing the first ones months ahead of that date. My bet is on January or February of 2006, with a formal announcement at MWSF.
Quote from “me”: “There is a more logical explaination – it’s the end of Apple’s fiscal year.
With analysts giving or taking away hudreds of millions of dollars worth of equity in AAPL for a single penny of quarterly earnings meeting or beating a target, AAPL is keenly aware that they must do EVERYTHING right to keep the stock at a PE of near-40.
So, by constraining the product supply chain at the end of the last month in the last quarter of the fiscal year, Apple gets to state (accurately) a lower $ of goods in warehouses, which makes the numers (accurately) looks even better.
If come the first week of October supply doesn’t get far looser we should revisit the “new product line” theory.”
Firstly the report clearly states that stock at this time is usually very high so this obviously isn’t something apple does at the end of every fiscal year.
Secondly it seems to me that apple doesn’t play the “Let’s make our stock price as high as possible every single day” game. They have over 6 billion in cash and don’t need the equity immediately. I’m not saying they don’t want a higher stock price, but the games of reducing inventory just for earnings reports produce price bumps, not long term increases. Apple has shown that they are content to wait and let the price grow steadily by their consistent pattern of under estimating thier sales and earnings. In every conference call they estimate selling a few more ipods than they did the previous quarter and selling a few more macs when they know, as does every analyst on wall street, that they will most likely blow those numbers out of the water. If they were looking for immediate equity they would be more realistic about estimates and allow the stock price to jump up quickly.
I’m not saying I honestly believe apple is updating the entire line at once. It has never happened before and it would require a tremendous amount of resources: engineering, cash and marketing. Then again apple has probably had those resources to spare recently. CPU hardware updates have been slow for a while now (years if you consider how aggressive they used to be). We’ve already been over the $6+ Billion in cash and there have been no new ads recently and expo paris was pretty dissapointing. The ipod nano was a good surprise but I hope apple isn’t dumb enough to be moving considerable amounts of computer engineering power to ipod, and the marketing on it hasn’t been extraordinary. This means that apple computer engineering and marketing have either been sitting around being bored for the last few months (or years in the case of CPU engineers) or they have been cooking up something enormous.
Then again what enormous thing could they do? What could be so big that they have no stock of ANYTHING? A major platform shift? Wait they already announced that and its not happening for another 10 months. We have good reasons to doubt that the intel switch could pulled out of a hat earlier than expected. Apple has issued several reports saying they are on track for next summer and some major app developers such as Adobe are complaining that porting isn’t as easy as Steve would have us believe. Apple would never, never, never make the switch without all their professional software staples like photoshop ready to rock on intel. They can’t afford to lose professional sales or marketshare.
Is apple good enough to lie straight to our face, then confirm the lies AND get other software vendors to slip in some untruths? Then they would have to keep this underwraps, which is possible for small projects but if they are doing the switch early thousands of employees would have to know about it. I doubt even steve can misdirect us so much, and I can’t think of anything other reason for an intentional purposeful stock clearence. I gotta go back to thinking this isn’t anything meaningful but I wish it was.
Steve “Bruce Dickinson” Jobs was quoted,
“I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!”
A simple explanation …
Reports are that Apple sales are strong (even up) in spite of the predicted drop off due to the Intel annoucement.
Could be that Apple has indeed miscalcuated and is short of PowerPC product.
A mistake anyone could have made.
Quote from canis major: “A simple explanation …
Reports are that Apple sales are strong (even up) in spite of the predicted drop off due to the Intel annoucement.
Could be that Apple has indeed miscalcuated and is short of PowerPC product.
A mistake anyone could have made.”
And a mistake apple has made before: g4 imacs?
Damn. that just makes too much sense. its so simple. why didn’t i see it. kudos canis major. haha thats a sentence entirely composed of greek and latin on an english speaking website. i’m a geek, that entertains me.
The hardest part of the switch, in IMO, is the inventory. my greatest feaer is that apple assumed a huge drop off and has almost nothing in the pipeline till intel time. if this report were just of a lack of g5 i would assume that means they ran out of single core chips and the duals aren’t ready yet. but the report is of a lack of ibooks and mac minis as well, which i am assuming are not awaiting the dual core g5 chip. maybe this is a combination of various factors like poor planning, errors, increased sales, lack of dual core g5s and other such relatively benign things.
YEA! More cowbell! Great reference. In fact, I’m leaving MDN to get more cowbell right now…
I think Apple is just pissed cuz Europe tried to take over the internet.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/29/business/net.php
(just kidding)
Maybe demand has outstripped supply (we can hope). After the Intel transition that won’t be a problem.
What Jay said.
You simply don’t want stock in the internal distribution channel come the end of the fiscal year, as it a) distorts the balance sheet as a positive and yet b) distorts the P+L as a liability.
Far better to run down and than start the new year (FY 06) with a clean channel.
Next quarter will be the Christmas quarter, and I think Apple will penetrate all market area with at least better-stronger-speedier or maybe new products. Apple can make last hit at this Chrismas. Next year every potential buyer will wait for the Intel MACs. And Apple will make a BIG suprise with earlier shipping of them
Optimising the balance sheet for year-end would require move inventory out of **Apple’s** wharehouses, i.e. pushing that into the distri’s warehouses. The article implies that the distri’s warehouses are empty.
Now, there are apparently at least new Mini’s on the way (hard to deny, looking at the news!!) and hopefully 970MP based PMacs/Xserves. And portables are really needing some make-up…