instead due to their price performance and screen size. Additionally, significant future growth in iPod sales without corresponding growth in higher margin product sales could also reduce gross margin and operating margin percentages.

The Company believes that weak economic conditions over the past several years are having a pronounced negative impact on its professional and creative customers who are significant users of its professional systems. Also, it is likely that many of the Company's current and potential professional, creative, and small business customers, who are most likely to utilize professional systems, believe that the relatively slower MHz rating or clock speed of the microprocessors the Company utilizes in its Macintosh systems compares unfavorably to those utilized by other computer manufacturers and translates to slower overall system performance. These factors may result in an adverse impact to sales of the Company's professional products as well as to gross margin and operating margin percentages.

The Company expects its quarterly revenue and operating results to fluctuate for a variety of reasons.

The Company's profit margins vary among its products and its distribution channels. The Company's direct sales, primarily through its retail and online stores, generally have higher associated profitability than its indirect sales. Additionally, the Company's direct channels have traditionally had more sales of software and higher priced hardware products, which generally have higher gross margins, than through its indirect channels. As a result, the Company's gross margin and operating margin percentages as well as overall profitability may be adversely impacted as a result of a shift in product, geographic or channel mix. In addition, the Company generally sells more products during the third month of each quarter than it does during either of the first two months, a pattern typical in the personal computer industry. This sales pattern can produce pressure on the Company's internal infrastructure during the third month of a quarter and may adversely impact the Company's ability to predict its financial results accurately. Developments late in a quarter, such as lower-than-anticipated demand for the Company's products, an internal systems failure, or failure of one of the Company's key logistics, components suppliers, or manufacturing partners, can have significant adverse impacts on the Company and its results of operations and financial condition.





The Company has higher research and development and selling, general and administrative costs, as a percentage of revenue, than many of its competitors.

The Company's ability to compete successfully and maintain attractive gross margins and revenue growth is heavily dependent upon its ability to ensure a continuing and timely flow of innovative and competitive products and technologies to the marketplace. As a result, the Company incurs higher research and development costs as a percentage of revenue than its competitors who sell personal computers based on other operating systems. Many of these competitors seek to compete aggressively on price and maintain very low