Posted on 10/18/2010 6:58:23 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Related Quotes Symbol Price Change AAPL 318.00
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs went on the offensive on Monday after a rare disappointment in sales by the iPad maker sent its shares tumbling, but even his biting words failed to reverse market sentiment.
Jobs, who has not addressed investors on an earnings call for two years, lashed out at competitors Google Inc and Research in Motion and dismissed the smaller tablets made by rivals such including Samsung and Dell .
"The current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival," Jobs told analysts on the conference call. "Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small."
Shares of Apple -- the second-largest corporation on the Standard & Poor's 500 index, after Exxon Mobil -- slid 6 percent in after-hours trading, which would be their biggest single-day loss since 2008.
Supply and production bottlenecks kept iPads, which have a 9.7-inch touch screen, from store shelves and buyers waiting weeks sometimes for their gadget. The company sold 4.19 million iPads in the fiscal fourth quarter.
"A little bit disappointing there. Street was expecting closer to 5 million units. The problem is supply, they can't make enough of them," said Gleacher & Co analyst Brian Marshall.
...
Gross margins fell short of target as iPads, whose profit margin is lower than it is for iPhones, made up a larger proportion of Apple's sales. Investors had expected more from a company that had smashed Wall Street's targets in each of the past eight quarters.
Gross margins came to 36.9 percent, below Wall Street's average forecast of 38.2 percent, despite better-than-expected components costs in the period.
"The one surprise is on the margin side. Everything else is pretty spectacular," said Gartner analyst Van Baker.
(Excerpt) Read more at sg.finance.yahoo.com ...
That’s nice. You just run along and play now. Maybe go scratch build an office chair and desk to go with your box. Or hand code some apps for it, or something. Don’t let us keep you here in Mac oriented threads, by all means.
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