In the wake of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. government securities — from AAA to AA+ — Apple’s (AAPL) shares are getting pummeled along with the rest of the market.
But after the subprime mortgage debacle and the debt ceiling circus, it’s worth remembering that this is a company whose profits last quarter grew 125% year over year and that now has more money in the bank than the Federal government. As of June 25, Apple’s holdings in cash and marketable securities stood at $76.2 billion.
“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out,” Lee replied. “As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”
She added Samsung was “quite optimistic” about 2011 sales but wouldn’t provide a forecast. “As you know, the tablet is relatively new and we need to see how the market develops before we give any firm numbers,” Ms. Lee said.
They shipped two million to stores, but a very small proportion of those were sold to paying customers.
Assorted Slices is an editorial-based publication covering Apple Inc. and similar topics.
