As U.S. demand for personal computers craters, Apple Inc is getting a boost from overseas PC sales, where iPods are hugely popular but Macs have not been a major presence.
Although analysts see the international market as fertile ground for Macs, they say the growth momentum may be tough to maintain due to the spreading economic gloom, Mac’s higher price point and smaller retail distribution network.
Mac shipments in the December quarter grew 16 percent internationally and a mere 2 percent in the United States. Mac sales made up more than 40 percent of Apple’s revenue in fiscal 2008.
Intel will appease notebook OEMs by delaying a price cut on mobile parts until June, and adjusting the release date according to the rate at which stored up Montevina inventory is cleared out. Ars wrote last month about this possibility, and questioned the parentage of the OEMs involved.
Calpella is Intel’s upcoming Centrino 2 platform, involving a new processor and chipset, the successor to Montevina. Calpella—which is a Nehalem derivative with an on-die memory controller, a new northbridge and GPU on one die, with options for Clarksfield quad-core and Auburndale dual-core notebook CPUs—was originally expected in the second quarter, then delayed until summer 2009.
