“Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster on Tuesday issued one of his trademark reports to address a number ‘unanswered questions surrounding the Apple story,’ such as when the company plans to next update its iPhone and the prospects for an Apple netbook,” AppleInsider reports.
“The report follows a series of similar installments dating back to May of 2006. Munster addressed 16 Apple questions last November and followed up with answers to 15 more questions in May,” AppleInsider reports..
Questions on general business operations:
• What is the current state of Apple’s business?
• How might Apple’s view the challenging economy
• How should we think about Apple’s gross margin guidance for FY09?
Mac-related questions:
• How are the new aluminum (and older plastic) MacBooks selling?
• Will Apple release a netbook?
iPhone-related questions:
• What is Apple’s current gross margin on the iPhone?
• How far are we into the iPhone’s international rollout?
• Will Apple release the iPhone in China?
• When will Apple release a new iPhone?
iPod-related questions:
• How should investors think about iPod growth going forward?
Questions on Apple’s Retails Stores:
• How many retail stores will Apple open next year?
• How will Apple stores sell the iPhone 3G as a gift during the holidays?
AppleInsider reports, “Munster maintains a Buy rating on Apple shares with a $250 price target.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, October 21, 2008:
This particular downturn is not creating a market of cheaper computers. That market has existed for some time and there are parts of that market that we choose not to play in.
I think when people want a product of the class that we make, over and over again people have done the price comparisons and we’re actually quite competitive. So we choose to be in certain segments of the market and we choose not to be in certain segments of the market. And the question is is the downturn going to drive some of our customers to those lower segments of the marketplace and get to buy lesser products? And I will be surprised if that happens in large numbers and I actually think that there are still a tremendous number of customers that we don’t have in the Windows world or in the other 99% of the phone market we don’t have who would like to and can afford to buy Apple products. So we’ll see what the ratio of those two things are but we’re not tremendously worried.
As we look at the NetBook category, that’s a nascent category. There’s as best as we can tell not a lot of them getting sold. You know, one of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone for browsing the Internet and doing e-mail and all the other things that a NetBook lets you do, and being connected via the cellular net wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket. But we’ll wait and see how that nascent category evolves and we’ve got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve.
