| In yesterday's press conference, Apple's CFO Fred Anderson revealed that Apple's on-hand inventory ended the quarter at an incredible one-day on-hand.
That beat Dell's 2nd best inventory on-hand levels of 6 day's on-hand. This leaves Apple as the leanest major computer manufacturer in the market, worlds ahead of their PC competition.
In response to analyst questions on how Apple achieved such a low level, Fred Anderson said that the company has been trying to organize manufacturing facilities to be next to supplier facilities. He did not go into more detail citing competitive trade secrets.
The Mac Observer Spin: This is simply incredible. For a company to be able to remain operational with that low of an on hand inventory and stay reasonably on top of demand is remarkable. This is a very important step for any company's efforts to be profitable. The less money and resources that are tied up in parts lying around waiting to be used, the more flexibility that company will have. In addition, this is probably a big part of how Apple has been able to bump up the iMacs so fast when compared to their past product cycles. This too is VERY important for Apple when competing in an Intel world where there are many players able to turn out new machines and models at a rapid pace.
A counter argument could be made that Apple has not been able to keep up with demand on the iMac, but the low levels of inventory have helped the company move faster to respond to the greater demand for Blueberry and Grape models.
Apple
Other Mac Observer Stories On This Subject:
Japan Sales Up 50% With 64% New Apple Customers
Apple's On-Hand Inventory Hits All Time Low |