Apple to Cut Prices on Several Products

Apple Computer said Monday that it is slashing prices by up to 30% for several of its key products.

Citing “the holiday season” as its reason for doing so, the company said its Apple IIc model with a black-and-white monitor would be reduced in price to $995 from $1,295.

The Apple IIc with a color monitor will carry a suggested retail price of $1,249, Apple said, but it did not provide its current suggested price.

Price cuts also were announced for other models, depending upon their memory size.

The Apple IIe with 128K memory was reduced to $945 from $1,145. The Macintosh 512K was lowered to $2,499 from $2,795.

The price for accessory 512K memory expansion for the Macintosh 128K was cut to $449 from $700.

Apple, which recently received a burst of unfavorable publicity from the resignation of Steven P. Jobs as chairman, has been saying that sales and profits were rising.

But the move to cut prices for hotly competitive home computers seemed likely to trigger memories of past rounds of price slashing in advance of the Christmas buying season that hurt profit margins throughout the industry.

Apple said last month that it anticipated profits during its fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 30, of between $12 million and $15.2 million, or 20 cents to 25 cents a share. That was well above many analysts’ forecasts that Apple would break even or earn perhaps 10 cents a share in the quarter.

Apple has been considered to be struggling financially for several months, largely because of a slowdown in computer purchases by both consumers and businesses that is affecting the entire industry.

But reports at the time that Jobs resigned indicated that the company was also undergoing internal dissension because of Jobs’ concentration on one product, the Macintosh. Jobs was reluctant to have the Macintosh designed so that other devices could be attached to it, despite the fact that the Apple II was successful largely because users could upgrade it with other devices for expanding its memory capacity.

An Apple III model intended as a successor to the Apple II was not a commercial success, nor was a more high-priced model called the Lisa that was to sell in the $7,000 to $10,000 range.