It's fun to speculate over what Apple, might do, should do or should not do, but after awhile it's pointless to keep debating back and forth about price points.
Respectfully, Doren, I have to disagree on this point, but only on a technicality which I think is well worth pointing out. If you look at price points from the consumer side of things, yes, it's pointless to say I wish they'd make a $400 desktop, or they'd sell more if they made a netbook for $200. That's pointless! But, that's not what I'm saying.
To use another metaphor, if you want to catch more fish in the same amount of time throw a bigger net. If Apple wants to accelerate expansion of the Mac market, they need to get busy and target the sales they are missing. Knowing their track record, I'm pretty sure the engineers at Apple can do this with relative ease and at healthy margins.
Now, saying that may seem pointless on this thread, because we can't do anything about it, but consider this. Part of our mission on this thread is to evaluate the company from an investment perspective with an eye toward the longer term aspects of potential growth or decline. If I, an aged x-hippie maintenance technician with an inadequate formal education from Arkansas, can figure out that Apple needs at this point to expand its product line, then it's highly probable that the expert engineers and bean counters at Apple can see it too. So if, upon evaluation of my arguments you begin to suspect that I'm right, and you trust your own judgement, the level of certainty associated with AAPL as a future accelerated growth investment just went up.
So, it's definitely not pointless to discuss product spread, price points relative to the rest of the market, or any other aspect of running a technology based manufacturing operation trading as a public company from a management perspective. In fact, it's the logical imperative. |
