“Apple Computer reported net earnings jumped 41 percent in the latest quarter Wednesday, topping forecasts on Wall Street, but it issued a lukewarm forecast for the current quarter thanks to its ongoing transition to Intel chips for its computers,” Amanda Cantrell reports for CNNMoney. “Nevertheless, investors liked what they saw, and Apple stock jumped about 4 percent in after-hours trading.”
“Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., shipped 1.1 million Macs in the quarter, just below Wall Street analysts’ expectations of about 1.2 million, owing to a slowdown in demand as customers put off buying older models in favor of waiting for new Mac models containing Intel chips. The company said its entire Mac line will make the switch to Intel chips by the end of the year,” Cantrell reports. “And Apple said it expects $4.2 billion to $4.4 billion in revenue for the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations of $4.72 billion, and earnings per share of 39 cents to 43 cents, after a 4-cent charge for stock-based compensation. Analysts had been forecasting profit of 47 cents a share for the current quarter.”
“This is the first quarter that Apple shipped Macs with Intel chips, six months ahead of schedule. The Intel-based iMac desktop debuted in January, the MacBook Pro laptop started shipping on Feb. 14 and the Intel-based Mac mini debuted on March 1. On a conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer acknowledged that some customers delayed buying Macs that haven’t been switched to Intel chips, and that others may be waiting until some software created specifically for Intel-based Macs by other companies, such as Adobe, became available,” Cantrell reports. ” Oppenheimer added that the company’s retail stores focused on the Intel transition, adding that sales reps in the company’s retail stores were “not discouraged” from telling customers to wait for Intel-based Macs to come out rather than buying older models, which added to the slowdown in demand. ‘As we anticipated, this pause was more evident during the March quarter,’ he said. Analysts expect the move to eventually boost sales, but they think it will continue to cause disruptions in sales until the entire Mac line is transitioned. Earlier this month, Apple released a beta version of software that will let users of Intel-based Macs run both the OS X operating system as well as Windows XP, a move that many analysts think could spark gains in Apple’s market share, currently estimated to be about 2.3 percent world wide.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iPod Halo, meet Intel Pause. He won’t be around long, so be nice to him. When he’s gone, it’ll make your work a whole lot easier; especially since we brought in that new Boot Camp guy to run your operations from this point forward.
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