04/25/2007, 7:45pm, EDT
Wednesday, April 25th
Best AAPL March quarter sees 35.1% margin
"I'm guiding gross margin down sequentially largely as a result of the commodity pricing beginning to trend up," explained Apple's chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer, who offered several reasons for his lower guidance in the coming quarter but later added that the company's iPod was "key" in achieving its 35.1 percent gross margin.
"We see commodity pricing trending up in June, we are now entering our education buying season, the June quarter tends to be more dominated by K-12 which tends to buy our lower ASP products, and we have in fact re-priced our display line."
"For the June quarter I've guided gross margins to 32 percent, and while I'm doing that for June, I would continue to target gross margins in the 27-28 percent range on a longer term basis despite our recent results, which have benefited from a number of factors, including a very favorable commodity environment," the financial chief cautioned.
"Looking forward we are likely to see other factors which will drive the gross margin down, such as a different commodity environment or product mix," Oppenheimer said. "We do not see the current gross margin levels as sustainable, and don't want you to count on 'em."
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signed, bitterly awaiting hardware upgrade
but does it seem like Apple cares? if only it was a computer company.