This is Tim: Cook on Apple's fourth-quarter earnings, the iPad mini, and more

26.10.2012

I'm actually not projecting whether supply and demand will balance for the quarter; I'm saying that I feel great about where we are on the manufacturing ramp; our supply output is significantly higher than it was earlier in October. I'm confident that we'll be able to supply quite a few during the quarter, but in terms of when that balance occurs, I can't tell at this point. Demand is robust.

We still continue to anticipate rolling out to the 100 countries that we announced before; it is our fastest rollout ever. There will be some large countries in the month of December, but we anticipate still achieving the 100. In terms of cost, with each new product we see learning curves associated with ramping production. And the new products we have now are no exception to that. The difference is the number of new products that we have moving at once. As Peter said, and as you can tell from the announcements we've had the last couple months, this is the most prolific period in our history in terms of new product introduction and innovation [and] the past six weeks have been phenomenal in terms of new product introduction. And so we do see all of these costs associated with each of these, but I don't see those costs accelerating on a per-unit basis as we go through the quarter; I see it very much being a production ramp across many, many new products.

As you know, we don't comment on our future views on products and roadmaps et cetera. But let me make some comments on your question. We continue to be very confident that the tablet market will surpass the PC market. There is incredible development in both ecosystems and products going on in the tablet space. It is already extremely compelling for many, many customers to choose a tablet--in particular, an iPad--over a PC. And when you look at the size of the PC market, there is an enormous opportunity for Apple there. Pretty much each quarter you see 80 to 90 million PCs being sold. And so we do think that the iPad and the iPad mini and the iPad 2 will all be extremely attractive offerings for people in lieu of PCs. And we're going to continue to very much focus on the future of iPad, we're very, very confident with what we have in the pipeline, and we're extremely pleased to have launched the iPad mini and can't wait until next Friday when we begin selling the very first units.