Apple Computer has cut the price of its 12-inch and 15-inch PowerBooks in a push to make notebook computers a larger part of its business.The standard 12-inch PowerBook, which comes with a drive that can burn CDs and play DVD movies, drops in price by almost AU$900 to $3,099. A similar model with a more-capable SuperDrive, which can burn both DVDs and CDs, also takes a $900 cut to sell for $3,499.
The 15-inch PowerBook saw price drops of between $1000 and $1200, depending on features. It now starts at $3,799 for the 867MHz model, rising to $4,899 for a model with a 1GHz processor. The higher-end model also includes 512MB of RAM--twice as much as the basic machine--and a larger hard drive.
The large 17-inch Powerbook also had a price cut of around $700 to sell for $6,299.
Apple did not make any changes to the features of its notebooks.
"We said in January (that 2003) is going to be the year of the notebook, and it is looking like that is the case," said Greg Joswiak, a vice president at the Cupertino, California-based Mac maker. Company CEO Steve Jobs made that proclamation at Macworld Expo, when he introduced the 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks.
Joswiak said that Apple has not seen a drop in laptop sales and that the price cuts were planned.
"We want to get to a point where we are selling as many notebooks as desktops, and you need to do some stuff to make that happen," he said. Notebooks make up about 42 percent of all Macs sold, well above the PC industry average of a 25 percent ratio of laptops to desktops sold, Joswiak said.
Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said that it makes sense to cut the prices on the 12-inch and 15-inch models, now that they are no longer brand-new. Also, 15-inch models have become more standard in the industry than they were when Apple introduced the Titanium PowerBook at the beginning of 2001.
"In a market where prices are always coming down, it just makes an awful lot of sense for Apple to do this," he said.
Gartenberg said that although the Mac maker does not have the cheapest models on the market, it offers a good value for what you get.
"It's always been the case that if you were looking for the lowest-priced laptop you could do better than Apple's offerings, but these price cuts bring them even further into line with competitors," he said.
ZDNet Australia's Jeremy Roche contributed to this report.
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