FollowApple CEO Tim Cook has said in a recent interview that the drop on sales that Apple has suffered this past quarter is due to iMacs not selling as fast as they had in previous years. This was due to a number of factors, Cook said.
In the 4th quarter of 2012, Apple sold 4.1 million iMacs. This figure is down a million units when compared to the previous years 4th quarter total, 5.2 million units. iMac units have been selling around 700,000 less every year for the past three years. The dramatic drop that was seen in this past quarter was due to a number of things, says Tim Cook.
One reason the drop in sales occurred was that there were less weeks in the 4th quarter of 2012 than there were in the same quarter of 2011. In just one week, Apples sells an average of 370,000 iMacs. Another factor that slowed sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 was that the newest version of the PC was released late, not giving amble time for the computer to become popular and make good sales.
Yet another reason sales were slowed, Cook said, was that Apples was experiencing an inventory issue and was short 100,000 units for the 4th quarter of 2012. All of these things combined slowed sales considerably, and the outcome was a significant drop in sales.
Cook added that the iPad and iPad mini may have drawn some of the consumer base of the iMac away from the PC and onto a tablet. The cannibalization of Apples customers from one product to another may reflect badly at first, as sales drop, but will pick up as those same customers change over to an iPad. Cook stated that Apple sold 23 million iPads last year and was unable to keep up with demands for the iPad mini. When they are able to produce enough units, Cook is confident these figures will rise even higher.
