Starting Friday, you’ll be able to buy Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMac model, and next month, the company will be shipping its new 27-inch model. But Apple has already warned that supply-chain issues mean that it won’t have enough of these to go around.

“We will have a significant shortage here,” CEO Tim Cook announced during the company’s last earnings call.

You can find specs, etc., here, and below. But if you’re looking for a bit of color, I can offer this tidbit: At the iPad mini event last month, Apple fans were at least as interested in the razor-thin iMacs as in the new iPad Jr. — perhaps more so.

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Apple® today announced the all-new iMac® will be available on Friday, November 30. Featuring a stunning design, brilliant display with reduced reflection, faster processors and an innovative new storage option called Fusion Drive, the new iMac is the most advanced desktop Apple has ever made. The 21.5-inch iMac will be available through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. The 27-inch iMac will be available for order through the Apple Online Store and will begin shipping in December.

Redesigned from the inside out, the new iMac packs high performance technology into an aluminum and glass enclosure that measures just 5 mm thin at its edge and features a reengineered display that reduces reflection by 75 percent. The new iMac includes 8GB of 1600 MHz memory, a 1TB hard drive, third generation quad-core Intel Core i5 processors that can be upgraded to Core i7, and the latest NVIDIA GeForce graphics processors that deliver up to 60 percent faster performance. Fusion Drive is an innovative new storage option that gives customers the performance of flash and the capacity of a hard drive by combining 128GB of flash with a standard hard drive to create a single storage volume that intelligently manages files to optimize read and write performance.

The 21.5-inch iMac is available with a 2.7 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.2 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M for a suggested retail price of $1,299 (US); and with a 2.9 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US). The 27-inch iMac is available with a 2.9 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M for a suggested retail price of $1,799 (US); and with a 3.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX for a suggested retail price of $1,999 (US).

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

“The plan is still the plan,” one source told AllThingsD. Good news for those hoping to put a new iMac under the tree this year.

Sadly, said plan also still includes the expected shortages that Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned during the company’s last earnings call. “In terms of general shortages on the iMac, we’ll be constrained for the full quarter in a significant way,” Cook said. “Part of that is that we’re beginning shipping the 21.5-inch iMac in November and the 27-inch in December. And so there will be a short amount of time during the quarter to manufacturer and ramp those, and I expect the demand to be robust. So we will have a significant shortage there.”

9to5Mac was first to debunk reports of iMac shipping delays.

After a meteoric rise, Apple’s stock is falling back to earth.

At market close Friday, Apple’s share price had slipped to a little over $527. This after tumbling to $505.75 Thursday — some 28 percent off its September high of $705. That decline has shaved about $170 billion off the company’s market capitalization, which was headed toward $660 billion just two months ago.

A nasty plunge, and an oddly timed reversal of fortune for high-flying Apple, which is headed into the holiday season with one of its strongest product lineups ever: A new iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, new iPods, and refreshed Mac desktops and portables.

So, what’s behind the slump?

It could be the overall markets, which have taken a vicious beating recently. It could be persistent supply chain issues that have to some extent hamstrung Apple from meeting robust demand for some of its devices — the iPhone 5 is still showing shipping times of two to three weeks on the Apple Store nearly two months after first going on sale; the new iPad mini is also backordered. The iOS Maps debacle and a high-profile management overhaul may have also shaken investor faith in the company.

It could be that concerns over the “fiscal cliff” are weighing heavy on Apple as well. A number of hedge funds that count the company among their top holdings have been unloading some of their Apple shares. As David Greenberg of Greenberg Capital told CNBC, “Someone yelled ‘fire’ in the theater where the hedge funds were safely booking their year-end profits — and as traders do, they will trample you trying to be first to get to the exit.”

Meanwhile, individual investors are too timid at this point to rush in and buy up the stock the funds are selling off.

Another possible factor: Apple is losing its appeal as a growth story as it morphs into a classic blue chip value story, as Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi recently theorized. “We believe that Apple is transitioning from a hyper-growth story to a more traditional, high quality branded company story,” he recently told clients. That’s certainly possible — Apple did pay a quarterly dividend last week.

And then there’s that litany of other concerns — the iPhone market is nearing saturation; innovation at Apple is dying; gross margins are declining; “Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs”; and so on. All can weigh on Apple’s share price.

In truth, it’s probably a combination of all these things — that clichéd “perfect storm” situation that’s so often blamed for volatility like this. With one other important bit factored in.

This pre-holiday decline is a historical pattern. It’s been happening for years. Apple shares slip late in the year amid profit-taking and some irrationality or other. And then the company reports monster first-quarter earnings in January and they spike. It happened this year. And last year. And the year before that. And the year before that as well.

Look at the chart below, which tracks closing prices from the first and last day of December and January. Over the past decade, Apple shares fell an average of more than 1 percent in December back to 2002, and rose an average of more than three percent in January (Note: That average excludes two outliers — an unusual rise in December 2007 and an unusually lousy January from 2008).

See the pattern there? What are the chances the same thing will happen come January?

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Previously: Apple Investors Are Wusses

Arik Hesseldahl contributed to this report.

Big management shifts at Apple are now taking place.

Scott Forstall, the man in charge of its iOS mobile software efforts and a major and longtime executive at the tech giant, is leaving next year and will remain an adviser to CEO Tim Cook until then.

In addition, new retail head John Browett is headed out the door.

As part of the move, Apple noted that four key execs — Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi — would “add responsibilities to their roles.”

Ive gets “Human Interface”; Cue will take over Maps and Siri voice recognition responsibilities; Mansfield will run a new unit called Technologies, “which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization”; and Federighi gets the big job of iOS and OS X.

More to come on what happened, but Forstall’s departure is very big news and a drastic move for such an important player in the tech space.

He had big fans and also many detractors for his sharp-edged personality, as well as what some described as exhibiting “growing open challenges” to Cook himself. Forstall had previously been called “CEO-in-waiting” in one media account in Fortune.

In addition, numerous sources noted persistent tension between Forstall and several other key execs, especially the powerful design chief Ive.

Veiled internal politics at Apple aside, Forstall has been a key part of Apple’s success over the last decade, especially in the development iPad and the iPhone.

Recently, there has been some level of ire at Apple over the troubled rollout of its own mapping software and the replacement of Google’s popular service, which was Forstall’s responsibility. (No, this move does not mean everyone gets Google mapping back, as one person asked me.)

Browett’s leaving is a little less of a surprise. Since he got the job, he has alienated many within the highly successful retail organization at Apple, many sources said.

His departure comes less than one year after the former Dixons CEO was hired by Apple to succeed Ron Johnson, who left for J.C. Penney in November 2011. Recently he’s been criticized by some Apple Store employees for unfriendly policy changes aimed at increasing Apple’s retail profit margins.

More to come, obvi, but here is the official press release from Apple, which it put out with the most understated title of all time:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services

Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles

CUPERTINO, California — October 29, 2012 — Apple® today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.

“We are in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The amazing products that we’ve introduced in September and October, iPhone 5, iOS 6, iPad mini, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPod nano and many of our applications, could only have been created at Apple and are the direct result of our relentless focus on tightly integrating world-class hardware, software and services.”

Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design. His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.

Eddy Cue will take on the additional responsibility of Siri® and Maps, placing all of our online services in one group. This organization has overseen major successes such as the iTunes Store®, the App Store℠, the iBookstore℠ and iCloud®. This group has an excellent track record of building and strengthening Apple’s online services to meet and exceed the high expectations of our customers.

Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X®. Apple has the most advanced mobile and desktop operating systems, and this move brings together the OS teams to make it even easier to deliver the best technology and user experience innovations to both platforms.

Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook. Apple’s Retail organization has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level who will continue the excellent work that has been done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services for customers.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

AllThingsD.com

Profits on a per share basis at $8.67 were well short of the $8.75 analysts had expected, even though they were up 24 percent year on year. Sales, though ahead of the consensus, were a little light, too, at $35.97 billion.

Obviously, there was a lot of pent-up demand for new iPads, which Apple announced last week, new Macs, and even iPhones in the quarter. That means that having come in a little light this quarter, expectations for Apple to make it up in the first quarter — including the holiday period — will be higher.

The earnings conference call is just about to start. We’ll see what Apple executives have to say about all this.

Update: So the call is over. There were a handful of interesting comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer. One came by way of explanation for the lower-than-expected profits and gross margins. All those new products that Apple released this week? They’re a little more expensive to make than the prior generation. And so gross margins are a little bit lower than they otherwise would have been.

Another interesting admission concerned the iPad mini. Its gross margin, Oppenheimer said, is a little “lower than the corporate average.”

But just wait until the first quarter of Apple’s fiscal year 2013, now in progress. That’s the holiday season quarter, and all those products are going to start selling. Oppenheimer said Apple expects to report sales of $52 billion in a single quarter. For perspective: That’s nearly $10 billion more than the revenue Apple reported for the entire year in 2009.

Here’s my rough transcript of the earnings conference call.

2:02 pm: And the call is getting under way. CFO Peter Oppenheimer is speaking.

Oppenheimer: 4.9 million Macs is 1 percent growth, and a record for a September quarter, and is better than the 8 percent market contraction that IDC predicted.

Oppenheimer is now running through the product announcements made earlier this week.

Mac Channel inventory is three to four weeks, below target of four to five weeks.

Now he’s talking about iPod, which is still the top selling MP3 player in the world. Apple sold 5.3 million iPods during the quarter.

iTunes brought in $2.1 billion in revenue. A revamped iTunes is coming. No mention yet of the radio service that was reported earlier today and totally killed Pandora shares.

Oppenheimer: Now speaking about iPhone 5. Demand has been phenomenal, he says. Demand outstrips supply. We ended the quarter with 9.1 million iPhones in channel inventory and that’s below target of four to six weeks channel inventory.

Oppenheimer: Talking about business adoption of iPhones. Canon has given them to its field sales team.

2:08 pm: Oppenheimer: Amtrak uses an in-house app for ticketing; reporters around the world are using iPhones to capture video.

And now he’s talking about iPad. They were ahead of our expectations. Strong sales year over year.

Oppenheimer: Recognized revenue from iPad and accessories was $7.5 billion vs. $6.9 billion. Ended quarter with 3.4 million iPads in inventory, just higher than the target of three to four weeks.

Oppenheimer: Volkswagen has developed in-house iPad apps across the company. Also a Chinese insurance company, the name of which I will not attempt to spell.

Oppenheimer: We will not stop until Maps — the troubled iPhone app — lives up to our standards.

Oppenheimer: Apple finished the quarter with 390 stores.

Oppenheimer: Operating expenses were $3.5 billion. Cash: $121.3 billion up from $117.2 billion last quarter. Increase was net of $2.5 billion worth of dividends paid, which amounts to $2.65 a share. About 82 percent of cash was offshore. Also, in August, Apple said it would buy back some shares.

Oppenheimer: Here’s the outlook. Revenue at $52 billion vs. $43.6 billion. Gross margin 36 percent. Opex $4.05 billion. EPS $11.75.

2:17 pm: Oppenheimer is wrapping up which means its almost time for the Q&A.

Katy Huberty: Asks about the possibility of EPS declines year on year. What’s driving the gross margins down?

Oppenheimer: The change year over year is being driven by the extra week last year. That along with a stronger U.S. dollar and the change in gross margin.

Oppenheimer: As you pointed out, this is the most prolific product period in Apple’s history. New products represent 80 percent of expected revenue. We’ve never before introduced so many new products with new form factors at once, and each one has higher costs. (I’m paraphrasing here.)

Oppenheimer: We’re heading into the quarter with the strongest iPhone line-up ever. Also, the iPad mini is priced aggressively. Its gross margin is significantly below the corporate average. (I guess that answers the critics who said the price wasn’t low enough!)

2:22 pm: Oppenheimer: We will work hard to get down the cost curves and improve our efficiencies. To be in a position to anticipate demand for $50 billion or more in revenue reflects our strength.

CEO Tim Cook is speaking: We’re unwilling to cut corners. This is the reason our customers choose to buy our products. We’re managing the company for the long run and will make great long-term decisions.

Question from Bill Schope of Goldman Sachs: Asking about the supply ramp for the iPhone in the holiday quarter.

Cook: Demand for iPhone is extremely robust. We are in a significant state of backlog right now. Our output has improved significantly. I’m very pleased with the progress. This is the largest volume ramp in Apple’s history. Difficult to predict when supply and demand will balance.

Question from Toni Sacconaghi from Sanford Bernstein. He’s asking again about the ramp of iPhone. Do you expect all 100+ countries this quarter? And will the supply contraints have material impact on cost of goods sold? Will COGS decline?

Cook: In regard to the first question, we still continue to expect to roll out to 100 countries. It is our largest ever, there will be some larger countries in December. With each new product we see learning curves in terms of production. The difference is the number of new products that we have moving at once. This is the most prolific period in our history in terms of new product introductions. We do see all of these costs associated. But I don’t see costs accelerating on a per-unit basis.

2:28 pm: Cook we continue to be confident that the tablet market will surpass the PC market. It is already extremely compelling for many customers to choose a tablet, in particular an iPad, over a PC. There is an enormous opportunity for Apple there. We do think the iPad, mini and iPad 2 will all be an extremely attractive offering in lieu of a PC. We will focus on the future of the iPad.

Question from Shannon Cross: Talk a little about China. Clearly with the revenue guidance it remains strong, but with the economy it’s mixed.

Cook: Revenue was $5.7 billion. IPad was up 45 percent in Greater China. Iphone was up 38, all in all a fantastic quarter in China. That brings us to a full year $23.8 billion in China, which is really phenomenal when you think about it. That’s up $10 billion year on year, and amounts to about 15 percent for all of Apple. We are continuing to invest in our retail stores there. We continue to expand distribution with channel partners there. We see it as an extremely exciting market.

2:32 pm: Cross again: With the launch of Microsoft Surface today, talk about the competitive landscape.

Cook: I haven’t played with a Surface yet. What we’re reading about it is that it’s a fairly compromised and confusing product. One of the toughest things you do with a product is make hard trade-offs and decide really what it should be. I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don’t think it would do all of those things very well. I think people, when they look at the iPad versus competitors, they will conclude they really want an iPad and they will continue to do that.

2:33 pm: Question from Ben Reitzes at Barclays: Is there more of an education focus with the mini? How do we think about the cannibalization of the form factor vs. the old product?

Cook: The way we look at this is that we provide a fantastic iPod touch, an incredible 4th generation iPad, and mini. The customer will decide what they would like and will buy them. We’ve learned over the years not to worry about the cannibalization of our own product. There’s still 300 million PCs being bought each year and a great many of those will be better off with an iPad or a Mac. Instead of being focused on cannibalizing ourselves, its really an enormous incremental opportunity for us.

Reitzes is asking about AppleTV. We haven’t heard about your hobby lately?

Cook: We sold 1.4 million AppleTVs. That’s more than 5 million during the fiscal year. Almost double the previous year. The business continues to do very well, but if you look at the revenue of the business versus the others, it’s quite small. Still a hobby, but a beloved hobby. We’ll continue to pull the string and see where it takes us.

2:37 pm: Gene Munster asking about the deceleration of iPad sales.

Cook: June to September quarter was 17 million to 14 million. June contained a 1.2 million increase in channel inventory. The sell-through looks different from reported sell-in numbers. The 14 million exceeded what we expected to do in iPad. We expected it to decline. Based on prior results, we would see a seasonal reduction in the September quarter. K-12 schools buy heaviy in the June quarter, versus the higher ed market. That is exaggerated when we announce a new product in March and have enormous demand in June and then a natural phase down. In addition to all that, it’s clear they held back on purchases due to new product rumors. These intensified in September.

2:39 pm: Cook: On a year-over-year basis, because of the year-ago quarter having a channel inventory build, the sell-through grew 44 pecent, so the underlying sell-through was extremely strong. We feel great about how iPad has done.

Munster: Given what we’re seeing in margins, as some of these products get more expensive, would you be willing to pass those costs onto customers?

Cook: It’s a hypothetical question. We think we’ve made great choices here.

Question from Mark Moskowitz: He’s asking about iPhone and iPad comparisons in sequential quarters.

Oppenheimer: We expect large sequential increases.

Moskowitz: Asking about iPhone 5 rollout. Will you have supply contraints in all markets or will there be certain markets where you intend to hit equilibrium?

Cook: What we did initially, we planned the first 30-40 countries, and rolled that across September in two different dates. We planned with an eye toward supply and what we think the demand will be. We do plan these in advance. It is not a precise science. We have to plan them with several weeks of notice. Occasionally it can be different than what we think.

Question from Steve Milunovish of UBS: Asking about pricing philosophy of the iPad mini.

Oppenheimer: When we set out to build the iPad mini, we didn’t set out to build a small cheap tablet. We set out to build a smaller device with the full iPad experience.

2:45 pm: Cook: We try to create a product that people will love for months and years and continue to use it in a robust way. You can really see that by looking at usage statistics. More than 90 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes from iPads. Apple will not make a product that people rarely use once they get it home. (Paraphrasing.)

2:46 pm: Milunovich is asking about the enterprise opportunity.

Cook: We now have almost all of the Fortune 500 who are testing or deploying iPads. We’ve also pushed fairly aggressively in the Global 500 and those are above 80 percent on iPhone and iPad. We’re doing fairly well there. There’s clearly much more to do but I’m felling pretty good about it.

2:47 pm: Question about the component environment (didn’t catch the name of who’s asking).

Cook: In terms of iPad and iPhone, I don’t see a component shortage gating us for the quarter in the numbers we have given you in the guidance. I think we have solved some challenges there and feel good about our position.

In terms of general shortage, the iMac will be constrained in a significant way. There will be a short amount of time during the quarter to build them. We will have a significant shortage there. (Hint: If you want an iMac, order it right away!)

2:50 pm: ISI, Brian Marshall asks about iPhone unit growth vs. revenue growth. He’s seeing a variance between that pattern and the iPad. Is it less accessories or a dollar spend?

Oppenheimer: The iPhone ASP were relatively flat year on year and up slightly sequentially. Ipad ASPs were down year on year in a low-double-digit way. This was reflective of price reduction on iPad 2 and stronger dollar and a little change in the mix. That drove the ASP change year on year. Sequentially, ASP was flat.

Marshall is asking about U.S. iPhone activations being faster than international.

Cook: We launched iPhone 5 during the quarter. I would have expected that versus the rest of the world.

2:52 pm: Question from Keith Bachman, BMO: Will the iPhone 5 launch in China in the December quarter?

Cook: Yes, it will.

Bachman: Will you end the quarter with a backlog?

Cook: I am not projecting whether supply and demand will be in balance. I’m confident we’ll be able to supply quite a few during the quarter. Demand is very robust.

Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank asking about the iPad. Specifically asking Cook for his view for emerging model of subsidies on tablets. Like Amazon’s Kindle Fire. How is that impacting the iPad business?

Cook: We’ve seen low-cost challengers before. Ipad beats every product at any price. We’re confident our focus on making the best product is what will win at the end of the day and we will stay true to that.

Whitmore: Asking about suppliers. Is that creating an added layer of complexity and to what extent is that contributing to higher cost structure?

Cook: I would not say there has been a significant change in supplier partners. I wouldn’t describe any change as significant. There hasn’t been one that would drive more cost.

Whitmore: I was asking about LCD screens and Samsung.

Cook: No change in cost, and we continue to have a commercial relationship with Samsung (despite the epic lawsuits).

2:57 pm: Question from someone whose name I didn’t get: Why is the time for iPad mini now right?

Cook: The comment that I think you’re referencing are comments that Steve Jobs had made about 7-inch tablets. We would not make a 7-inch tablet. We don’t think they’re good products. We would never make one. One of the reasons is size. Not sure if you saw our keynote, but the difference in just the real estate size in 7.9 vs. 7 is 35 percent, and when you look at usable area is much great than that, more like 57 percent. IPad mini has the same number of pixels as the iPad 2 does. You have all 275,000 apps that are iPad ready. IPad mini is a fantastic product, it is not a compromised product. It’s in a whole different league.

Sorry, I missed that guy’s second question. Oppenheimer is now speaking about gross margins and the effect on them by the sheer number of products that Apple just announced.

Oppenheimer: We are also going to work to get down the cost curves as we have done in the past. No change in what we try and work on and we’ll report to you in January how we did.

And that’s it. Thanks for being here.

The earnings were lower than the $8.75 consensus though sales beat the $35.8 billion in sales that analysts had expected. Both numbers were as usual, substantially higher than Apple’s guidance of $7.65 per share and sales of $34 billion.

Apple’s third fiscal quarter is often a quieter one, bolstered a bit by the back-to-school season where it has traditionally promoted sales of notebooks. Consumers also have lately been holding back on purchases of new iPhones iPads and Macs anticipating correctly that new products were on the way to ensure strong holiday-season sales.

Apple shares, after closing the regular session down by more than 1 percent to at $609.5 rose by $3.51 in after hours trading or less than 1 percent to $613.28 before its shares were halted.

Here’s some data points:

iPad sales were sequentially down by 17 percent to 14 million units in the quarter, clearly a sign that consumers were waiting for the announcement that Apple made last week of a new iPad and the iPad mini.

Sales of iPhones on a unit basis were about even sequentially. Apple sold 26.9 million of those in the quarter versus 26 million in the third quarter.

Mac sales were solid. Apple sold nearly 5 million in the quarter, of which nearly 4 million were notebooks. Mac sales in the Asia-Pacific region, including China amounted to $7.5 billion which is interesting for the fact that that region drew nearly even with Europe, which reported $8 billion worth of Mac sales.

Here’s another: Apple’s pile of cash continued to grow: Its combined hoard of cash, short, and long-term investments reached $121.25 billion. It paid a dividend of $2.65 a share.

Update: Trading has just resumed and Apple shares are falling. As I type they’re trading at about $598, down about $11 or more than 1 percent.

Here’s Apple’s announcement.

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
26.9 Million iPhones Sold; Record Fourth Quarter Revenue and Profit
Board Declares Quarterly Dividend of $2.65 per Common Share

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 fourth quarter ended September 29, 2012. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $36.0 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.2 billion, or $8.67 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $28.3 billion and net profit of $6.6 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.0 percent compared to 40.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The Company sold 26.9 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 58 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 14.0 million iPads during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.9 million Macs during the quarter, a 1 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 5.3 million iPods, a 19 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.
Apple’s Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $2.65 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on November 15, 2012, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 12, 2012.
“We’re very proud to end a fantastic fiscal year with record September quarter results,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re entering this holiday season with the best iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod products ever, and we remain very confident in our new product pipeline.”
“We’re pleased to have generated over $41 billion in net income and over $50 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal 2012,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2013, we expect revenue of about $52 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $11.75.”

Certainly that’s what Apple suggested back in July, when it said it expected fourth-quarter earnings of $7.65 a share on revenue of about $34 billion. That was a conservative take, even for a company that is notorious for giving conservative guidance, and it fell well short of the consensus forecast at the time.

So, what can we expect when Apple reports after market close today?

Well … Wall Street is looking for earnings of $8.91 per share on sales of $36.27 billion, which is far in excess of Apple’s lowball guidance. The independent analysts tracked by Fortune are expecting earnings of $10.14 on sales of $38.8 billion, which is even further beyond Cupertino’s numbers. And it’s impossible to say who is likely to come out closest to the mark.

A few things worth noting ahead of Apple’s report:

• Apple shares are up more than 50 percent so far this year. But they’re also down 10 percent from the record closing high of $702.10 they hit last month.
• Analysts tempered their iPad sales forecast Tuesday after Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company had sold 100 million iPads to date. Many extrapolated from that number and concluded that fourth-quarter shipments might fall slightly below their expectations of about 17.5 million.
• Apple refreshed its MacBook Air and Pro lines in June, and that almost certainly drove Mac sales a bit.
• The iPhone will be the major catalyst in the quarter, just as it always is. That said, the iPhone 5 shipped on Sept. 21, and was on sale for just nine full days before the fiscal quarter closed, and while demand for the device was, and continues to be, insatiable, supplies have been constrained. Remember, Apple sold five million iPhone 5s over the handset’s launch weekend, and that was viewed by Wall Street as a disappointment. Analysts figure Apple sold 25 million to 26 million iPhones in the fourth quarter.
• Apple’s next quarter is really the one to watch. The company is heading into the holidays with a new iPhone, a new iPad, a new smaller iPad, new iPods, a new iMac and Mac Mini, and the eagerly anticipated 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. With that in mind, some analysts feel Apple’s fourth quarter is something of a … throwaway.

  “Our view is that September quarter numbers do not matter,” J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz said in a Wednesday research note to clients. “Apple can miss or beat. It does not matter. … In our view, the two important iPhone and iPad launches set the stage for big numbers to be reported in late January 2013 as relates to December quarter results.”

Apple will release its numbers sometime after 1 pm PT today, with an earnings call to follow at 2 pm. Join us back here for coverage.

Thankfully, I was flying Virgin America, which has Wi-Fi on every flight. So, like many people, I was tuned into various liveblogs (including, of course, our own).

Being up here gives a little distance and perspective. So, pardon the pun, here’s my 30,000-foot take on what Apple announced, and how it fits in with some other things going on in the industry.

The iPad mini was the expected star of the show, and it arrived as the final product, though with few surprises. Apple kept the same aspect ratio and pixel count as the iPad 2, so the mini is all set to run any iPad-optimized apps.

Apple isn’t competing aggressively on price — selling the Wi-Fi-only model for $329, well above tablets such as the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 (not to mention a host of other small Android slates). Still, Apple did lower the bar slightly, with the mini selling for $70 less than the cheapest full-size iPad 2.

Apple also introduced an updated fourth-generation iPad that should upset some who thought “the new iPad” wouldn’t become “the old iPad” quite so fast. For all other buyers, they are just getting more bang for the buck — along with the new Lightning connector. That’s a good thing for the future, probably, but, as with the iPhone, it’s a pain if you have lots of existing iPeripherals.

On the desktop Mac side of things, Apple revamped its two main models — the iMac and Mac mini. However, Apple plays in only in a couple segments of the desktop market. For those looking for an all-in-one, the iMac got thinner and more powerful, employing a hybrid drive that combines flash and hard-drive storage.

Here, the iMac will find itself up against a host of touchscreen Windows 8 all-in-ones. Apple continues to make the case that touch is best served on tablets, and that when it comes to the desktop, a nice trackpad will do the trick. Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo and everyone else will be making a different case, as they add touch to lots of their models — particularly tablets, all-in-ones and convertibles.

As for laptops, Apple added one new model to its lineup, introducing a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, offering those who want the high-end screen in a more compact and slightly less pricey machine. As with the 15-incher, choosing the Retina display gets you a thinner, lighter laptop, but at the expense of an optical drive and a bigger hit to the wallet.

Apple didn’t break a ton of new ground on Tuesday, but what it did was expand its reach, covering a larger part of the markets in which it already competes. Plus, Apple ensured that it will have some brand-new products in stores just as Microsoft and PC makers begin their massive Windows 8 push. Google is also expected to update its Nexus lineup, having scheduled an event for Oct. 29 in New York. (Android chief Andy Rubin will be at D: Dive Into Mobile later that day.)

Well, it’s about time to fasten seat belts and turn off electronic devices. That gives me just enough time to ponder which devices might be finding their way onto this year’s holiday shopping list.

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If you’re looking for a surprise here, you won’t find it. As predicted, Apple delivered a smaller version of the tablet it first brought out in April 2010.

And, earlier this morning, Tim Cook announced that Apple had sold 100 million of the full-sized ones since then.

So why buy the new one? Apple’s messaging today comes down to two basic ideas:

• The iPad mini is just as good as the regular iPads.
• The iPad mini is much better than the smaller tablets you’ve seen from Amazon and Google.

Is that enough? Earlier in his presentation, Cook argued convincingly that consumers didn’t have much interest in rival tablets, boasting that 91 percent of all Web traffic on tablets comes from iPads. But, as we now know, Apple’s own executives think there’s value in a smaller tablet, even if Steve Jobs publicly disagreed.

Time to see what consumers think.

——————

We know that Apple is showing off a new iPad today. And we know it will be smaller and cheaper than its other models.

But while we obsess over the details that Tim Cook and company unveil at the California Theatre in San Jose this morning, it’s worth keeping the big picture in mind: How will Apple convince consumers to buy a smaller version of the thing they have already bought 84 million times?

There seems to be a pretty good business case for Apple here: Google and Amazon are making increasingly attractive mini tablets. And even if those gadgets don’t appear to be making much of a dent in iPad sales so far, there’s no reason to let them have the minipad market to themselves.

Plus, there’s the fact that Apple executives who aren’t Steve Jobs seem to think a small tablet is a good thing.

But that’s all behind-the-scenes stuff. For the past two years, Apple has been telling consumers that the tablet it makes is perfect for use at home, at work and on the road. So, what does a smaller version of the same thing have to offer?

We’ll get to hear Apple make its case very soon. Tune in below for live coverage. You can also watch the event stream in real time, as long as you have an Apple computer, Apple TV or iOS device.

Greetings! Typing at you live from San Jose. In theory, Apple event should kick off in 10 minutes.

9:53 am: Time to play “name that song.” Currently in rotation: Something that sounds like El DeBarge. Though pretty sure it isn’t.

9:54 am: Also have time to introduce my fellow ATD writers, who are also on hand to contribute live reports. Say hello to John “The Brow” Paczkowski, Bonnie “Boom Boom” Cha, and Adam Tow, who is so cool he doesn’t need a nickname.

(FYI, Adam is the guy who takes all the great photos you’re seeing. He’s also the guy who keeps the site running. Good guy to suck up to.)

9:56 am: Interesting. SoundHound works even with the din in here. So I can tell you we’re now listening to something called “It’s Time” by something called Imagine Dragons. (Sounds like Simple Minds, for you oldsters.)

10:00 am: And we’re on. Here’s Tim Cook. Loud applause.

10:01 am: Cook intro-ing. “Really exciting things to show you.”

Update time, beginning with iPhone.

Superlatives for iPhone 5 opening-weekend sales, which we’ve heard about.

Now a video of people buying phones at Apple stores.

Buying an iPhone 5 was very, very exciting. Even more so if you had a thumping, soaring soundtrack behind you as you made your purchase.

No ugly people bought iPhone 5s opening weekend.

10:04 am: Cook is back onstage.

Now recapping intro of iPod touch, nano. Shoutout to The Verge, which is apparently off the Apple shitlist.

Sold three million new iPod touches, nanos.

iOS 6 now on 200 million devices.

“Phenomenal!”

“Fastest upgrade rate” of any device “we’re aware of.”

More feature recaps.

125 million documents “in the Cloud.” Wonder if that includes music files.

300 billion iMessages in last year. [Applause] 28,000 per second.

160 million Game Center accounts. (I have one. Have never used it.)

70 million photos shared.

App store: Last month, 700,000 iOS apps. Now 275,000 iPad apps. Both numbers “growing,” Cook says.

New milestone: 35 billion apps downloaded.

“This is jaw-dropping.”

$6.5 billion paid out to developers. Someone back that math out, and you can figure out total app sales.

iBooks: 1.5 million titles available.

Cook is uptempo, selling hard this morning. Bezos-like.

New version of iBooks out today. “Really cool new reading option”: Continuous scrolling. A few “ahs” from the crowd.

New sharing feature with Facebook, Twitter.

Now supports Japanese, Chinese text.

“You’re going to love it.”

On to the Mac. Apple outgrew the PC market, 15 percent to 2 percent, in the last year. Been doing that for six years.

Because everyone everywhere says Mac is the best.

10:14 am: Going to continue innovating with Mac. So here’s Phil Schiller to talk about it. [Loud applause]

MacBook: 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display was perhaps the best we’ve made. Engadget, The Verge, Wired all praised us.

But No. 1-selling notebook, and Mac, is 13-inch MacBook Pro. “Just perfect for so many uses.”

So we’re going to “introduce something so much better.”

Here’s the 13-inch MacBook Pro. [Loud applause]

.75-inch thin. Look, it’s 20 percent thinner than the last model. At 3.5 pounds, it’s “almost a pound lighter” than the last one.

“Look how thin it is.”

Bye-bye, optical drive.

Retina display, like all of you said it would have.

2,560 by 1,660 pixels.

“Second-highest-resolution notebook display.” 15-inch Macbook is highest.

Schiller is trying to tell us that you’ll get a better image on your notebook than on your HDTV.

“Surfing the Web could be like a fine print magazine.”

Great for photographers. Lots of Retina-optimized apps.

“But there’s a lot more”: Better speakers, HD camera, etc.

On to the innards: “Everything about the new MacBook Pro has been reengineered from scratch.”

Chips: Intel Ivy Bridge, Intel HD Graphics.

“It is a fantastic computer.”

10:22 am: Meanwhile! Eagle-eyed John Paczkowski points out that on the right side of the stage, there appears to be something draped in black cloth on a black stand. If you squint and hope, you could imagine something like a big monitor under there …

10:23 am: Now an ad.

Starting pricing: MacBook Air, $999; MacBook Pro, $1,199; MacBook Pro w/Retina, $1,699.

“It is the best lineup of portables we have ever offered.”

10:25 am: New: Mac mini. “You knew there’d be something called ‘mini’ in this presentation.” [Applause]

Haven’t heard anyone talk about Mac mini in a very long time. New innards. Better chips, more storage, RAM. Entry-level is $599.

10:27 am: iMac. It’s “the best all-in-one computer in the industry.”

Remember the original iMac from 1998?

Schiller shows off something that looks like those “evolution of man” posters, showing iMacs over the years.

Ooohs and ahs for new super-thin iMac. Followed by loudest applause of morning.

Sustained applause.

Still clapping.

Schiller: “Stunning from every side.”

10:29 am: So there’s that mystery solved. It was a monitor under wraps over there. It just happens to have a computer built into it.

5mm-thin edge. Extends down to “the chin” of the device.

They used something called “friction stir welding” to put the device together.

It brings back the image of the old iMac, which now looks like a sad fatty hanging out with Louis C.K. at the Cinnabon.

10:32 am: Many more specs, explanations of how they made it so thin. For instance: “Plasma deposition process.”

Eight pounds lighter than old tubby iMac.

“There is a serious computer inside this thin design.”

New iMac cannot fly, nor can it turn water into wine.

New “Apple Fusion Drive” is available for both mini and iMac. 128GB flash. 1 terabyte or 3TB HDD. “Fused into a single volume.”

Basic idea: Fusion Drive figures out, on the fly, what stuff should go over to flash drive, which should be relegated to HDD. “You just use it, it works.”

Fusion Drive gets round of applause.

Entry level for new iMac: $1,299. More applause.

Shipping next month.

Next level up: $1,799. Those won’t ship till December.

Uses 50 percent less energy. “Perhaps the boldest new iMac designs we’ve ever created.”

10:38 am: Schiller off, Cook back.

“These products are really cool.”

Next up: iPad.

New stat: Two weeks ago, sold our 100-millionth iPad. Applause.

That’s in 2.5 years, remember. “Unprecedented for a new product in a new category.”

“This has attracted a fair amount of attention.” But no one is using rival tablets, Cook says: iPads account for 91 percent of tablet Web traffic.

Why are iPads killing it? “Turns out there is a simple reason for it. People love their iPads.”

Cook sings praises of existing iPad line.

So …

Wait for it …

Not there yet: Some education talk.

Students, teachers love the iPad. Here’s a testimonial from a school superintendent in Texas.

Refers to iBooks Author, introduced earlier this year. (Haven’t heard much about this since.)

New iPad textbooks so great they make you want to be a kid again. Now in 2,500 classrooms in the U.S.

Not just Big Three publishers, but little ones, too.

New version of iBooks Author. (Note that yesterday McGraw-Hill was offering executive for interview, post-event.)

Easier to update books, etc. Available today.

10:45 am: Time to talk up iPad in the office.

94 percent of Fortune 500 “testing or deploying iPad.”

“Just getting started …”

Still winding up: Newest iPad is awesome. “But we’re not taking our foot off the gas.”

10:47 am: Cook off, Schiller back.

Schiller: Fourth-generation iPad. “Amazing … it is a powerhouse.”

New A6X chip.

2x faster than last chip for CPU, for graphics. New “image signal processor,” etc.

Ten-hour battery life. Upgraded camera. LTE with “greatly expanded coverage.” Working with many new carriers, including Sprint.

New cables, connectors.

Retina display, of course. Comes in “both black and white.”

Starts at $499 for 16GB. $629 with cellular.

“So, what else can we do to help customers find even more uses for iPad …”

10:50 am: And here we go: iPad mini (or whatever they’re calling it). Loudest applause yet.

Yup, “iPad mini.”

“What can you do with iPad mini that you can’t do” with regular iPad? “This” — you can hold it in one hand.

Again, crucial here for Schiller, et al, to explain why you want one of these, not just to talk specs.

Then again, crowd already pumped.

Thin as a pencil, light as a pad of paper.

Screen size: It had to be smaller, but not too small, etc. iPad 2: 9.7-inch diagnoal, iPad mini, 7.9-inch. Both have same pixel count. So all software created for iPad already works on mini.

“Great for reading your email, responding to your email, surfing the Web.”

Great for magazines, books, HD phone calls. Great for all of your iWork apps. “It is so much fun” to play GarageBand on this.

Facebook shout-out.

Games: Real Racing 2.

No one else can say their apps work great on shrunken tablets.

Compares iPad mini side by side with Google’s Nexus 7, without calling it out by name.

Apple’s display is bigger — 7.9-inch to 7-inch. That’s 29.6 square inches, compared to 21.9. 35 percent larger. “That’s a huge difference.”

Shows off Web page for Guggenheim site, argues that, in practicality, it’s 49 percent bigger, once you strip out the Android “noise” around it. Flip it over, and it’s 67 percent.

Two messages so far: iPad mini is like iPad, but smaller. iPad mini is like Google’s Nexus, but better.

Shout-out to TripAdvisor. Did I also hear him name-check Pandora?

iPad mini’s innards better than iPad 2’s.

Better chip, 5MP iSight camera, LTE wireless, faster Wi-Fi.

Ten-hour battery life.

“Every inch an iPad.”

11:00 am: Here’s a video.

Jony Ive, of course.

This sounds like The Jam in the background. Wonder if that’s right.

This isn’t just a shrunken iPad, says Jony Ive. If we just shrunk it, you’d notice “loss.” This is not just a “reduction of the original.”

More spec talk.

(Apple isn’t arguing that there’s anything you can do with this — short of holding it one-handed — that you can’t already do with the devices it is already selling. And that alone may be enough for some people. But I assume that the price will be the real kicker here.)

11:05 am: Schiller back.

Comes with its own line of covers (optional).

Starts at 16GB. $329 for Wi-Fi only.

Still selling iPad 2 at $399.

Preorder starts Friday. W-Fi ships next week. Two weeks later, shipping Wi-Fi + cellular.

And here comes a TV ad.

Not a word. Very smart.

11:09 am: Schiller off, Cook on.

2012 wrap-up. “We told you earlier this year you would see some incredible innovation this year … we think we kept our promise.”

Sparing you recap of things we’re already heard about today. My hunch: No one more thing today. Hope I’m wrong!

“Yes, it has been an incredible year.”

“A truly prolific year of innovation for Apple.”

Shout-outs to Apple employees. “They dedicate a huge part of their lives to making the best products on Earth.”

Applause. Cook beams.

“These are the most talented and innovative people I know, and it is a privilege to work with them”

11:12 am: And that’s a wrap.
Closing music from Jack Black, via his new “Blunderbuss” album, which is excellent. [Correction: That's Jack White, of course. Thanks to reader RichardL for noting.]

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• Apple’s iPad Mini Event, in Pictures
• A 30,000-Foot View of Apple’s iPad Mini Event (Literally)
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• Apple Unveils 13-Inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display, Next-Gen iMac
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I am a retired person with an old iMac that is on its last legs. In about six months I plan to replace it with a MacBook Air, but currently my budget is very challenged. I use my computer mainly for email, Google and some note taking/writing. It has occurred to me that purchasing a $300 netbook with Windows Starter might be a good interim solution. Does that make sense?

A:

Netbooks with Windows Starter are more cramped and limited than either your current or planned Macs. And they aren’t built with the finest components. But given your budget and computing needs, one should do fine for you—provided you are willing to tackle the modest learning curve involved with switching operating systems.

Q:

Are all-in-one printers (printer, fax, copier) as reliable as single function printers, i.e. printer only? Is there more chance that combo models will require service than single function printers?

A:

I own, and have owned, both types of printers, and haven’t noticed any difference in reliability, nor have I received any significant number of complaints about the multifunction models. All popular consumer printers are sold at low prices and the real money is in the ink. So in my experience, the printers themselves could be more rugged.

Q:

Do you know if there is a feature to turn off the ability of Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet to track a user’s location and Web history?

A:

The Nexus 7’s Google Now feature, which automatically presents relevant information on topics like weather and traffic and flights, depends on the device knowing your location and Web history.

You can opt in or out of allowing the device to track this data, though doing so totally can require several steps and will disable major functions of Google Now and some other features of the Nexus 7. More information is at http://bit.ly/OwdImR.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Six years ago this month, I revealed in Businessweek that Apple had incorporated in Nevada where the corporate tax rate is zero. So I found the Times’ account — written by Charles Duhigg and David Kocieniewski, about the many financial tricks that Apple employs to minimize its tax exposure — to contain a lot of old news, but also some new, fascinating details. Who couldn’t love a phrase like “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich” to describe arcane accounting and legal tricks?

But the implication the story leaves a reader with — that Apple is somehow doing society a disservice by not paying its fair share of corporate taxes — is simply wrong on many levels. The most dubious of the lines that the Times attempts to draw is between Apple and the budget crisis at De Anza College, a Cupertino community college where Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was once a student. The college is facing a “death spiral” because of a decline in funding from the state. This funding, the reader is led to conclude, would be more plentiful if corporations like Apple were to step up and pay, and not escape the tax bill by setting up an office in neighboring Nevada.

What the Times fails to make clear is how community colleges are funded in California. The picture is much more complicated. California community colleges draw the majority of their funding from the state’s general fund — which is drawn directly from the state’s personal and corporate income taxes — and from local property taxes collected by counties. As of the 2009-2010 budget cycle, these two buckets made up about 88 percent of the system’s funding. State lottery funds, federal funds and student fees made up the remainder.

Tax policy wonks — which I’m not — will remember that California was the birthplace of the property tax revolt movement in the 1970s. In 1978, California voters overwhelmingly approved a measure that limits the amount by which property taxes can increase each year. Since then, at least one estimate pegs the amount that the state’s taxpayers have avoided paying at north of half a trillion dollars as of 2009. In February, the property tax shortfall facing the state community-college system was $41 million. Conclusion: If there is to be blame for the shortage of taxpayer funding at De Anza College, a healthy portion of it should be laid at the door of California’s own voters and taxpayers, who in 1978 thought that property-tax limitations were a good idea.

I had a few other problems with the story. Take sales taxes. When you buy a Mac in New York, you pay a sales tax of 8.875 percent. For a base-level iMac, priced at $1,199, that works out to more than $106 in taxes. While some states charge no sales tax — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — the average sales tax in the U.S. works out to 9.6 percent.

Putting aside the fact that the average sales tax in Canada is higher, let’s assume that Apple’s North American sales of $38.3 billion in its fiscal 2011 were taxed at that rate, and do the math: We get $3.7 billion in sales taxes paid into the coffers of states and municipalities, except in those five states that have no such tax. That amounts to more than 1.5 times the $2.4 billion the Times says Apple would have owed the federal government. Factor in VAT and other similar taxes in the U.K. and throughout Europe, and you get the idea that Apple is generating tax revenue aplenty on the sale of its goods. Yes, those taxes are passed on to customers. But isn’t that the case with every tax a corporation making consumer products pays?

Finally, you may remember that earlier this year Apple released an extensive report on the number of jobs it had created and supported both through direct employment and in the orbit of the products it creates. It seemed an odd thing for Apple to release at the time, and now we know why: It reads almost like it was prepared by Apple in advance, knowing this story was in the pipeline at the Times. The final number, by its reckoning: 514,000 U.S. jobs are created by the Apple universe, including 47,000 employees; 210,000 jobs were created as part of the app economy, which didn’t even exist until 2008.

Assuming that each of those jobs pays a salary north of $35,350 a year, taxes collected on that income could range anywhere from 25 percent to 35 percent, depending on the income bracket. And that’s before accounting for any stock-based compensation.

At this point, the discussion turns to a deeper question: Is it better for society to have a company pay more in taxes, or to create more jobs? You can argue that had Apple not taken advantage of the various strategies it employed to pay less taxes, it might not have flourished as well as it has, and thus created fewer jobs. But people smarter than I will likely hash out the finer points of this argument in the coming days.

(Image is a screen grab from this silly Beatles cartoon built around the group’s song “Taxman.”)

Okay. So maybe you still feel a little funny, and/or like a self-parody. But an Apple ad is an Apple ad, so we will dutifully catalog it here.

As many people who catalog Apple ads have noted, this is the first time that Apple has used a celebrity in one of its campaigns for a very long time. The last one that the hivemind can recall: Jeff Goldblum hawking the original candy-colored iMac, back in the late 90s — way back when Apple was still pretty much a niche company:

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reports that NPD’s data, which counts only U.S. sales, implies that Mac sales for the March quarter ended down 5 percent year over year. And if that proves to be the case, Apple could potentially miss its Mac number when it posts financials next Tuesday. Caveat: Last quarter, Apple beat NPD data by 14 percentage points — something to keep in mind while mulling Munster’s assertion.

Anyway … the Street is looking for worldwide Mac sales of 4.5 million; Munster figures Apple likely sold less than that — somewhere between 4.1 million to 4.4 million, with sales slowed by a core MacBook Pro and iMac lineup that hasn’t been refreshed in more than a year. Those two product lines alone likely account for about 50 percent of Mac sales, so it’s certainly conceivable that diminishing consumer interest in them might affect Apple’s sales numbers.

But is this really anything to worry about?

Munster himself acknowledges that strong iPhone and iPad sales will more than offset any Mac softness. He still expects the company to beat consensus EPS and revenue estimates and, like many Apple watchers, he sees new Macs headed into the pipeline soon, following on the heels of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors. Said Munster, “We believe that MacBook, iMac, and potentially MacBook Air, lines could all be refreshed during the June quarter, which we believe would result in a reacceleration of Mac sales.”

First is fixing our execution, ensuring we have the right systems, processes and people. This includes things like optimizing our supply chain, including SKU reduction, to remove unnecessary complexity from the way we design, manufacture and deliver products; upgrading our sales tools and systems to respond more quickly to customers; and increasing the productivity of our sales force by rationalizing our go-to-market.

For those who don’t know, a SKU — pronounced “skew” — refers to something called a stock-keeping unit. It’s business shorthand for a particular model or type of product. A PC with a certain processor, certain amount of memory and certain capacity hard drive, and in a particular color, is a SKU. The same goes for models of printers, smartphones, or different versions of products sold into different distribution channels or with different options inside the box.

What Whitman is saying is that HP is producing too many different types and configurations of products, and this is injecting a lot of expensive operational complexity that might be getting in the way.

My ears perked up at this during the conference call, and when she repeated the phrase on CNBC today (see video below). It took me back in time to — of all things — the very first Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote I ever attended. The year was 1998, the MacWorld Expo that year was in New York and I had begged my boss at the time to let me go. Apple was in those days a company that many media organizations could afford to ignore because its relevance was limited to people who used Macs, which included me.

This was the year the first iMac was about to explode on the scene, and indeed, Jobs talked in great detail about it during this keynote. But not before he set about explaining the strategic problems at Apple he had sought to solve during the preceding several months.

One of them was the fact that Apple made a comparatively dizzying array of computers, nearly all of them labeled with numbers that had no clear meaning to anyone. During his talk (part of which I’ve embedded in a grainy video below), Jobs wiped away the complex list in favor of a four-square grid with four kinds of products. Consumer desktops, consumer notebooks, pro desktops and notebooks.

For a young business reporter just starting out, which I was, the clarity of Jobs’s argument was a revelation: A complex product offering can cause problems both for the customer and the company selling the goods. First, it muddies the waters for customers, especially when two or more versions of a product suit a particular need. Second, it adds operational cost and complexity.

One product — say, a printer — may be manufactured in just one way, but then customized in a mind-numbing set of different variations for different lines of business. There may be different accessories in the box or different service options, or whatever. Each of these is a SKU all its own that has be tracked and marketed and sold and supported, adding costs along the way.

Being the biggest tech company by revenue, working in five major business segments and operating in 166 countries adds plenty of complexity by itself. Why make it more complex than it has to be? Clarity and simplicity work.

Let’s compare Apple and HP on their choice of computers. Shop for a Mac today, and the four-square grid that Jobs showed in 1998 still stands, mostly: There are two kinds of notebooks, and they vary by screen size, and three kinds of desktop machine each aimed at unmistakably different needs, for a total of six. Of course there are variations within them for memory and hard drive and screen size, but you get my point.

On HP.com I see six different notebooks for “everyday computing,” five ultra-mobile machines, six “high performance” notebooks and four machines sold under its “Envy” brand. I count 21 different notebook options, and I haven’t even looked at the desktop models yet. Does anyone really need that many choices?

A sense of clarity is good for business, and it’s an important lesson that many companies of a certain size have to re-learn from time to time. When Jobs learned it at Apple in 1998, its product complexity was nowhere near the level that Whitman now faces at HP. But we all know how keeping it simple worked out for Apple. And while the problem is probably an order of magnitude more complicated at HP, the fundamental business lesson still stands: A stripped-down product portfolio could work for HP, too.

Here’s part of the Steve Jobs keynote I mentioned above. This is Part 2, and he goes on to describe the simplified product strategy in the the first few minutes of part three here.

And here’s Whitman’s appearance from CNBC earlier today.

Among the headline features are deep integration with Apple’s iCloud service, and with Twitter. And several features from iOS devices, like Messages and Reminder, are making their debut on the Mac, and will create a more unified experience among Macs, iPads and iPhones.

The release, which is coming only a year after Lion debuted last summer, might just indicate a speeding up of the cadence at which Apple does Mac software upgrades. Usually there’s an interval of 18 months to 24 months between major OS upgrades. That makes this announcement a bit of a surprise. Does that mean we can expect another one about 18 months from now? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 10 new features:

iCloud built in: Mountain Lion will be the first version of OS X built with iCloud fully integrated. Documents in the Cloud is a new feature that will allow documents you create and edit on the Mac to sync up and readily be available on iPhones and iPads. Changes you make in the document on one device will automatically appear on the other. You’ll be able to use iCloud from the moment you start up your Mac and sign in with an Apple ID.

Messages: It’s crazy to think about it, but iMessage users on the iPhone and iPad have sent something like 26 billion messages in only the few months it has been available. Messages is the new instant messaging application that will replace iChat. It will unify the experience between the Mac and iOS devices, and will still be compatible with services like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber, but will also bring iMessages into the Mac. Conversations stay up to date across all devices. It supports photos and videos. Also? There’s a FaceTime button.

Twitter: Twitter is also deeply integrated into Mountain Lion. You’ll be able to tweet directly from within several applications, sharing Web site addresses, photos and videos. Central to this is something Apple calls the Tweet Sheet, which you call up from the Share menu. It grabs what you want to share on Twitter and you write your tweet from directly within the Mac OS. And as cool as this is, it’s notable also for what it’s not: Facebook integration. Expect lots of speculation around that.

Share Sheets: Sharing is kind of a big deal these days, so it makes sense that the ability to do it — whether on Twitter or via email or any one of the cloud services out there — would be available on the Mac. There’s a new Share button in Safari and in other applications that makes it easy to send a photo to a friend via email or to Flickr, or a video to Vimeo or to another computer via AirDrop.

Notification Center: The dashboard of notices saying what’s going on in iOS is coming to the Mac. Similar to how you reach it on the iPhone — a swipe down along the length of the screen — it will appear on the Mac with a two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad, and the list will appear on the right side of the screen. When you get a notification from an application — say, an email has arrived, or a download is finished, or a calendar reminder is going off — you can see them all in one place. Also, short messages with notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then fade away after a few seconds. It reminds me a great deal of a third-party application enhancer I use, called Growl.

Reminders: Another popular iOS app is being added to the Mac. Your to-do list remains synced across the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and you can add reminders that pop up throughout the day, so you don’t forget.

Notes: The all-purpose “take this down for later” application gets the Mac treatment. Soon you’ll be able to drag URLs into a note. And thanks to iCloud, they’ll be synced across Mac, iPhone and iPad. You’ll also be able to “pin” a note to your desktop, meaning it will stay open even if you close the main Notes application. Notes also has a Share button.

Game Center: Long a weakness on the Mac, gaming is getting stronger all the time. Games, it turns out, are the most popular software titles on the Mac App store. So it makes sense to bring the Game Center experience from iOS to the Mac. I saw a quick demo, where two people played a racing game against each other — can’t remember which game exactly — one was on the iPad, the other on the Mac. You’ll be able to challenge friends, keep track of your standings on a leaderboard and see what games your friends like. There’s also support for in-game voice chat, so you can talk trash.

Gatekeeper: Expect this feature to be controversial among Mac software developers. Basically, it’s an attempt by Apple to deal with the fact that the one serious security threat it faces is software that looks good at first but turns out to behave badly only after you’ve downloaded and installed it. The new scheme basically sets up a three-tier system, where the user can decide from where they will be allowed to download and install new software. In the most restrictive — or some will argue safest — case, you can set your Mac to allow only software from the Mac App store. As it does with the App Store on iOS devices, Apple vets the software sold there for safety. In the second case — this one not as restrictive — you can install software from sources other than the App Store, but only from developers who have signed up as a known developer. Here, Apple will not have checked the app for safety, but will at least vouch that the developer is known. Developers will have the option of signing up for a Developer ID. This is the part that I think they’ll find a little controversial. Anyway, in the third case, there are no restrictions. You can install software from any developer and any source, much as you can do today.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV handy, you’ll be able to use your TV as a screen for your Mac — it’s super easy. If they’re on the same wireless network, the Mac will have a simple pulldown menu that makes your TV mirror what’s on the Mac.

Finally, Apple added a lot of new features for the Chinese market. Text input has been improved, and several popular Web services — like Baidu for search, integration with Sina Weibo for Twitter-like sharing and video-sharing with Youku and Tudou — have been built in, in order to make the Mac OS experience a lot more China-friendly than it has been before. Given the Apple madness that has struck that country in recent months, it will certainly find a happy audience.

Its his second honor from the Queen, who named him Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, in 2006. The new title will be conferred by the touch of a sword held by the Queen.

Interestingly, Ive is only one of two people being given this particular title this year, from the extensive list of other honors published in the London Gazette. (Ive’s name appears on page 24 of the announcement; there’s a PDF of that page here.) The other KBE recipient is the art historian John Patrick Richardson, who wrote a well regarded biography of Pablo Picasso.

The best profile of Ive that I know of is this 2006 BusinessWeek story by my former colleague Peter Burrows. It’s more than five years old, and so may be a bit dated, but it’s terrific.

The full announcement from the British Embassy is below.

Her Majesty the Queen honours Apple designer with knighthood

31 December 2011

Jonathan (Jony) Ive has been appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE).

The honour, for the lead designer at Apple Inc. of products like the iPod and iPad, was part of the New Year 2012 Honours List and was in recognition of Jonathan Ive’s services to design and enterprise.

“I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making,” said Jony Ive. “To be recognized with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful.”

“I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design,” Ive added. ” I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple.”

The British Consul General in San Francisco, Priya Guha, said she was “delighted that Jony Ive has been granted this exceptional honour by Her Majesty The Queen. Through his design of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, his work has transformed the lives of a generation of people, revolutionising the way people interact with technology. He epitomizes the strengths of British design and innovation.”

British Honours are bestowed on merit for exceptional achievement or service to British interests. This is the second royal honour for Ive, who was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2006 for his achievements in British design and innovation. The current Knighthood recognises his work on raising design standards generally in consumer, industrial and professional goods and for his championing of British design.

Jonathan Ive becomes Sir Jonathan Ive, and the knighthood will be conferred by the touch of a sword by Her Majesty The Queen.

London-born designer Ive is the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, reporting directly to the CEO. Since 1996, he has been responsible for leading a design team widely regarded as one of the world’s best.

Ive has demonstrated a life-long commitment to design. He has been recognized with numerous design awards including being named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum London and awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts.

Ive holds honorary doctorates from The Royal College of Art, The University of Arts London, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Northumbria University (Newcastle Polytechnic) where he also received his Bachelor of Arts degree. He holds 596 design and utility patents in his name.

After graduating in 1989, he co-founded the London design agency Tangerine, where he designed everything from washbasins to televisions. In 1992, he moved to Apple and, after the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, became Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, designing the first iMac in 1998, its progressively sleeker successors, and then the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

The Queen chooses the recipients of Honours on the advice of the Prime Minister and other relevant ministers, to whom recommendations are made by their departments or members of the public. Private nominations–those made by individuals or by representatives of organisations to the Prime Minister’s Office–can also be made and account for about a quarter of all recommendations.

(Image is a screen grab from this Apple video on the MacBook Air.)

The Macintosh TV

A new iMac with integrated TV functionality.

That’s the latest speculation from Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, who believes there will be a step between the Apple TV and the Apple Television.

“We believe Apple’s redesign of the iMac in the first half of 2012 will likely usher in some … TV capability into the iMac offering first, effectively taking the high end and larger screens of the iMac line and pushing it toward the TV market by integrating Apple TV and iCloud features into a slimmer all-in-one PC,” Blair writes. “Apple could effectively start with what they already have on the manufacturing line and slowly push their offering from 27 inches and scale up from there to 32 inches and then move on to the 42, 50 and 55 inch market.”

Blair figures these new iMacs would behave like Apple TVs, streaming movies, TV shows, photo slideshows and more to newer Wi-Fi-enabled televisions and providing them access to content stored on iCloud as well.

It’s not an outrageous idea, particularly as an interim step on the way to a true television set. Or as a good reason for consumers to abandon their current TV sets in favor of iMacs. This would be particularly compelling if Apple was able to persuade the cable companies to stream their content though the Apple TV interface. Add to that AirPlay mirroring on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, voice navigation via Siri, and integrate it all into a 42-inch or better screen, and and you’ve got a pretty good reason to watch TV in your office. Or mount your PC on the living room wall.

Of course, Apple has been down this road before, first with the ill-starred Macintosh TV and then with its Front Row media center program, which was abandoned with the launch of Lion.

The company may not be interested in traveling down it again, particularly these days, when it seems so focused on disruptive changes. If Apple hews to that strategy for its HDTV, there will be no interim step. Just a single big announcement intended to upend the industry as we know it and send the competition scrambling.

Apple typically updates many of its products each year, sometimes extensively, sometimes less so. But in 2012 it’s got big plans for a number of them. Supply chain sources tell the occasionally reliable Taiwanese trade mag Digitimes that Apple will “completely overhaul” its product portfolios this year — everything from the iPad and iPhone to the iMac and MacBook Air. And evidently it’s already hard at work on the iPad and has requested flat panel modules and LED light bars for two prototypes.

Details beyond that are slim indeed, though in a separate report Digitimes says we can expect two next-generation iPads next year: An upgraded iPad 2 around March and a true iPad 3 late in the third or fourth quarter.

Two iPads launched between March and December? Seems dubious to me. As I said, break out the salt lick. Still, you never know.

The research house says the Mac saw a year-over-year sales increase in April 2011 of 9 percent. That’s nowhere near the 22 percent Y-O-Y growth Wall Street is looking for in the entire June quarter.

Why the descrepancy? Simple. April of 2010 is a hell of a tough comparison month.

The refresh of the MacBook Pro line on April 13 drove a 39 percent spike in Mac sales for the month. With no similar refreshes juicing demand in April of 2011, sales aren’t up quite as much.

Which doesn’t mean Apple won’t post that 22 percent increase investors are hoping for. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes, it’s far too early to make a call on the June quarter, particularly given the launch of new iMacs earlier this month.

In fact, according to NPD weekly data, Apple saw Y-O-Y unit growth in Macs of 35 percent during the first week of May following the May 3 launch of the new quad-core, Thunderbolt iMacs.