The Most Important Two Minutes From Apple's Conference Call (AAPL)

Q - Benjamin Reitzes, UBS analyst

Then with regard to your outlook, I mean can you just tell us a little more about what you are expecting with the Intel transition? I mean, you are coming off a quarter where you guided 4.7 [billion in revenue], you are coming in at 5.75, I mean, now you are at 4.3 [guidance for next quarter], shouldn’t we assume, why are you being so conservative, a little more detail on this exact Intel transition issue would be helpful, maybe even if you can go back to the weeks of inventory and what you might expect -- further drain or anything else?

A - Peter Oppenheimer, Apple CFO

Let me, I’ll let Tim address our channel inventory. But let me just speak to you in a little broader term about our guidance. We factored a number of considerations into developing our guidance. Our first, then, this really was your first question, Q1 spanned 14 weeks, and Q2 will span a normal 13 weeks. And again the 14th week that we had this quarter was the week between Christmas and New Year which is a very strong, sharp shopping week. Second, for our Mac business, we have factored in the very strong response that we’ve received for the new Intel-based Mac that we announced at Mac World, the limited number of shipping weeks that we will have on the MacBook Pro and the positives that we saw in customer demand for Q1. For the iPods we have factored the extraordinary demand in Q1 which was fueled by iPods being one of the top holiday gifts of the season, some channel fill that we had and the seasonal drop in demand as we go from holiday quarter to the March quarter.

Question: Did Peter Oppenheimer answer the question? I still can't work out why Apple chose to give guidance below consensus.

See: Apple's Full F1Q06 Conference Call Transcript