Ha! Det verkar som om Gruber är inne på precis samma spår som jag:
Daring Fireball: That Product Transition
So what did Apple announce on Wednesday this week that would lead to a decline in earnings? With regard to profit margins:
Certainly not the Shuffle, which neither changed technically nor dropped in price.
Not iTunes. If anything, this week’s announcements of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and ringtone sales will increase earnings, not decrease.
Probably not the iPod Nanos or Classics. The new Nanos sport a significantly improved display — bigger, brighter, and with a 204 ppi density. The Classics sport much higher-capacity hard drives. Both are very nice updates from last year’s models, but neither seems so significant as to bring about a 30 percent decline in earnings.
That leaves the iPod Touch and the price-dropped $399 iPhone. Margins, I suspect, may well be lower on these products than on the other iPods and most Apple products. The $299 8 GB Touch is priced just $100 higher than the $199 8 GB Nano. Given Apple’s usual margin of around 30 percent, the Touch would have to cost just $70 more to produce than the Nano. The far larger (and multi-touch-capable) display, faster processor, and Wi-Fi strike me as costing more than $70.
Gruber tar dock upp en sak som jag glömde bort, trots att jag misstänkte samma sak:
The most likely explanation for Apple’s supposed earnings drop this quarter is that Apple is moving additional products to subscription-based accounting. Apple announced back in April that they would account for iPhone earnings over a 24-month period, so as to be able to provide additional features via future software updates without charging for them. (Remember the $2 charge for the 802.11n AirPort enabler?) This means that no matter how much profit the iPhone generated at $599 or does now at $399, only a fraction was going to be booked this quarter, price drop or not.
It seems almost certain (to me at least) that the iPod Touch will be accounted for by subscription, too. If you thought there were glaringly empty spots for additional icons on the iPhone home screen, take a look at the iPod Touch’s. The iPod Touch and iPhone are clearly sibling products running variants of the exact same system software; I expect future software updates to appear simultaneously for both products.
Detta är själva kärnan i de lägre intäkterna. Dvs själva bokföringen av iPod touch utslaget på t.ex. två år gör att de omedelbara intäkterna blir lägre.
