Apple Computer has announced a hefty US$247 million first quarter loss, excluding investment gains and accounting charges.
The loss amounts to 73 cents per share, on total revenue of US$1 billion, a 57 percent drop compared with revenue in the same quarter a year ago.
Including the investment gains and accounting change, Apple's loss was US$195 million, or 58 cents per share.
The loss is Apple's first quarterly deficit since 1997, the year that CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company.
Apple CFO Fred Anderson said in a conference call that the company expects a "slight profit" in the current quarter.
However, the company again cut its forecast for full fiscal-year 2001, saying it now expects sales to be about US$6 billion, down from the US$6 billion to US$6.5 billion range it predicted last month.
Jobs: We took our medicine
"We took our medicine last quarter and brought our channel inventories back down to about five and a half weeks," Jobs said in a statement. "We're starting this year with a bang - shipping our new PowerBook G4 in January, our new 733MHz Power Mac G4 in February and Mac OS X in March."
In December, Apple said it had 11 weeks worth of inventory sitting on dealers' shelves and would look to rebates and other promotions to clear the stock.
Apple said it shipped 659,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter. In the conference call, Anderson said the company has reduced its inventory glut by 300,000 computers, ahead of its target of paring 250,000 machines.
"As a result we exited the quarter with a near-normal level of channel inventory, which... is down from a level of 11 weeks...at the beginning of the quarter," Anderson said.
Digital hub
In addition to introducing new machines last week at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the company also demonstrated new iTunes and iDVD software aimed at turning the Macintosh into a digital hub connecting a variety of consumer electronics.
Analysts questioned introducing consumer-oriented software that only works with hardware included on the professional Power Mac line. The iDVD program requires a recordable DVD drive that only comes with the high-end Power Mac, while the CD burning feature of iTunes requires a CD-RW drive that is currently only available on the Power Mac.
However, Apple may add rewritable CD drives to the iMac line. This week, Apple launched a US$200 rebate on its two upper-end iMac machines, perhaps a sign that new iMacs with CD-RW drives will be coming soon.
