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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OrionX who wrote (31710)	1/8/2002 7:18:55 PM
From: spitsong	Respond to of 213181

OrionX: The reason I can think of at least four reasons why Apple might want to announce some products before it is ready to deliver them: 1. To let people get used to the idea of them. This is important when they are sufficiently different from competing products that a period of adjustment might be necessary. Many people had a lot of laughs at the expense of the first iMac (heck, some are still laughing). But, if memory serves, Apple booked about 200K preorders in the 3 months before they started shipping, as more and more people got used to the idea of a simple, elegant, compact, all-in-one that differed so markedly from the three-box beige systems they were used to buying. 2. To reconcile the need for the secrecy that accompanies Apple's product innovation with the need to tool for and ramp up overseas manufacturing, load products into shipping containers, and transport them across the ocean. 3. To roll out different models of the new product in a way that might maximize Apple's profit. When Apple has rolled out many of its new products in the past, it has often made the high-end models available first, so that the early adopters would have to pay Apple for the most profitable model rather than allowing them to choose a lower-priced (and lower margin) sibling. 4. To gauge demand. This is probably a secondary reason, since Apple must commit to certain parts vendors for initial deliveries, but a lead time to gauge demand by preorders might also allow it to avoid committing to longer-term parts orders if those preorders aren't tracking to their estimates. Lots of other possibilities exist, too, of course. Buona fortuna