2009

• Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster (Apple analyst) fears the World Wide Developers Conference that Apple (AAPL) is hosting next week in San Francisco could be a “slight disappointment” to investors (Fortune). In a note to clients issued early Thursday, Munster writes that he hasn’t lost faith in Apple’s long-term plan to drive iPhone sales by adding new models, lowering prices and entering new markets. However, he just doesn’t think it will happen next week.
  

  A comparisson of opinions (mine in red)

• The Street: “Apple is widely expected to unveil a new iPhone next week” Munster: “Regardless of whether or not new iPhones are announced at WWDC. We continue to expect a mid-July launch of a family of iPhones.” Me: Apple will most definitelly wait to launch the next set of iPhones. The idea of this conference is to hype up Snow Leopard, and not to try and compete with Palm Pre noise in the mobile hardware space (expect more iPhone 3.0 announcements however). Palm will steal the show for a few weeks before Apple comes and squashes it with a July announcement at an exclusive iPhone event.
• The Street: “Many investors are looking for Apple to announce a $99 iPhone and a cheaper data plan” Munster: “$149 is a more likely price point and puts the chances of AT&T (T) offering reduced data fees at about 25%” Me: Apple has been notorious for contiuing to offer products of high quality that deserve their respective price points. Remember what Cook said about the Apple moving into the netbook space? He scoffed at it. A $99 iPhone seems to go against Apple’s reputation, not to mention developers will not be supportive of tiered data plans.
• Munster: Doesn’t believe Apple’s CEO will take the stage on Monday, but he has faith that Jobs will return from his medical leave, as promised, before the end of June. Me: We will see Steve Jobs at or before the next iPhone launch.
• OS X Snow Leopard: Munster: Worries that the “near-final release” will have “limited wow-factor” and that the demo “may be disappointing.” Me: I agree. This may be the weakest Apple event we have seen since 2005.

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