While warning that its profit margin will fall in the coming quarter, alarming investors, Apple is indicating that it has something really juicy to introduce before the end of September.

The tease came Monday as Peter Oppenheimer, the Apple chief financial officer, explained why the company expected its gross profit margin to drop from 34.8 percent in the three months that ended in June to 30 percent in the current quarter. That caused a sharp drop in Apple’s stock price in after-hours trading on Monday.

One reason for the narrower margins is a promotion that gives free iPods to students who buy new Macintosh computers. But another is what Oppenheimer called “a future product transition, which I can’t discuss today.”

Apple is widely expected to be getting ready to refresh its line of notebook computers, and there is some speculation that it may introduce a new kind of device that is smaller than a laptop but larger

than an iPhone. In several ways, Apple executives hinted that that new product would compete aggressively on price with rival devices.

“We will deliver state-of-the-art new products that our competitors just aren’t going to be able to match,” Oppenheimer said during a conference shout with analysts, responding to a question about the lower profit margin targets. And several times Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, outlined Apple’s evolving pricing philosophy.

“One of the investments we assemble is to introduce new products that initially cost more considering they deliver an entirely new level of value to the customer,” Cook said. “Then we ride the cost curves down with value engineering and volume manufacturing, leaving us far ahead of our competitors. We have some of these types of investments in front of us that I can’t discuss.”

For years, Apple pursued a premium pricing strategy, reflecting its status as a niche…

Original post by Top Tech News