But the key part of what your saying is ipad 2.0. Apple generally hold the price and generally only change it when they release a new model. ipad 2.0 at christmas is a new model.
No I am not, Apple can absorb some component pricing increases and some currency exchange costs in the short term but not when both occur, the normal component drops wont happen with this model, flash is not going to get cheaper either, so the lowering cost of production is not their to offset losses owing to forex.
We have seen a large drop in currency but nothing unusual for the last three years, so good companies would be averaging their costs based on a 80 cent USD conversion to hedge so to speak, I would expect given the timing of the recent drop Apple Australia will not have had a chance to take that into account and would be sitting on their baseline costs right now, if the dollar drops below 80c they will be forced to move sooner rather than later.
For Apple they are meeting a strategic inflection point they have not encountered before in the iPod era, that is the increasing lower cost of production as the product matures, almost a given in the tech sector, they have relied on this to absorb losses in the past from forex but cannot now, so what has happened in the recent past is not a good indication of future performance, as an example is the recent iTUNes price rise in Australia, along with rises on quite a few accessory items.
Prior to the iPOD era, Apple pricing for Mac, IIc, Lisa etc tracked with the forex market quite closely, they did not have the volumes at that stage to leverage of commodity price drops, exactly the same situation I am saying they are in now with the Ipad, if for different reasons.
