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

To: MGV who wrote (171893)	7/20/2014 8:24:24 AM
From: Ryan Bartholomew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

There is no credible data pointing to substantial input cost increases. As the product nor its costs have been announced, you're correct that there's no way to know with certainty which components will be used and what they will cost. If Apple is able to release the iPhone 6 with the same or lower costs than current models, it would certainly increase my profit outlook for the company. Anything in excess of 5% or so, however, would do the opposite. As for pricing, Apple products are premium products commanding premium pricing for well established reasons That's not in doubt. The question is whether they can command the same (or even greater) premium now that there are plenty of competing premium products that it will need to catch up to (screen size being just one area where improvements are expected and will be necessary to do so). Early iPhone models had such a gap over the competition that they established their ability to command a premium with ease. Successive models saw that gap close, but Apple has been able to continue to benefit from the line's history and a situation where most competing premium phones are within a $100 range of each other (subsidized), and most often, within $50. If that were to change whereby iPhones were $150-$200 more, consumer behavior will be quite different. Ask any front-line cell-store sales employee what an extra $100 or $150 post-subsidy does to consumer demand.