Apple confident about iPad Mini despite low margins

Six months after its launch, the ipad mini accessories is a drain on Apple’s profits, but the company is willing to endure the financial strain as long as it can sell more iPads, analysts said.

The low-priced iPad mini was one of the reasons Apple reported a drop in profits for its second quarter of 2013 on Tuesday. Apple’s profit was $9.5 billion, down from $11.6 billion from the same quarter last year, while revenue was $43.6 billion, up from $39.19 billion.

The iPad mini has been aggressively priced at $329 and is becoming a larger part of iPad shipments. But the profits on the iPad mini were “significantly below the corporate average,” said Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer of Apple, during an earnings call Tuesday.“We are willing to make short-term trade-offs ... where we see long-term potential,” Oppenheimer said.sdRd4E34

Overall iPad sales increased, totaling 19.5 million units during the quarter, up 65 percent from the previous year’s quarter. iphone 5 accessories sold significantly more iPad Minis in the quarter ending on March 30 compared to the previous quarter when the tablet started shipping. First-time iPad buyers have made up a large portion of iPad mini purchases, said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Beyond iPad margins, increased sales of older iPhone models and a slight drop in Mac sales were also responsible for a drop in quarterly profit. Cook also said it is hard to compare the quarter to fiscal 2012, when Apple sold more products with higher margins.

An iPad mini rests on top of the larger, full-sized iPad.The lower price of the iPad mini had an effect on tablet profitability and analysts said that the mini will continue to eat into sales of the higher-priced iPad. But the larger volume of mini shipments will help offset concerns about financial returns, analysts said.

Margins are a measure of a company’s health and Apple ran the risk of generating less profit from the iPad with the lower-margin mini, said David Tan, assistant professor of strategy at Georgetown University.

“If customers don’t recognize the quality difference, they cheap iphone 4 cases are not willing to pay the extra price,” Tan said. The iPad mini looks like a smaller version of the iPad, but uses older hardware than the 9.7-inch iPad.