These are somewhat unsettling days for Apple. Its iPhone has redefined the mobile market and its App Store just shipped its one-billionth product, but things are not entirely copacetic in Cupertino, Calif. CEO Steve Jobs has been on sick leave for months, the national and global economy has nudged Macs toward the “unnecessary luxury” category, and some of its advertising juju has been robbed by Microsoft’s “You find it, you keep it” campaign.
So it’s not surprising that rumors are flying that Apple is planning to announce price cuts on its two most popular lines of products, the MacBook and the iMac. The news first appeared on the AppleInsider Web site, which cited “people who’ve proven extremely reliable in predicting Apple’s future business directions.” There’s no word yet, however, on how much the price cuts might be.
AppleInsider suggests that the lower prices could start showing up in late spring (which basically means next month), and could coincide with Apple’s annual back-to-school promotion that launches in June and runs through Labor Day.
Netbook Competition
The real culprit, however, might be a class of machines that Apple so far has dismissed as not worth building — the netbook. In a conference call last year, Jobs famously said that Apple could not build a sub-$500 computer “that is not a piece of junk,” but that hasn’t stopped consumers from snapping up increasingly large numbers of the devices.
The rising consumer interest in netbooks is playing out in financial reports. For the first time in nearly six years, Apple posted a quarterly decline in Mac sales. At the same time, netbook manufacturer Acer shipped 50 percent more units this past quarter than it did in the quarter before. Clearly, the netbook market is not waiting for Jobs and Apple to figure out how to build a high-quality, low-cost…