A couple of weeks ago I gave my opinions why Apple shouldn’t chase the Windows market down the cheap netbook path. Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s makes a similar comment on his Fortune blog quoting Turley Muller’s analysis of Apple’s prospects.
The big challenge for all businesses in this downturn is to focus on core values and products. For a company in Apple’s position, to be distracted by a venture into low margin, cheap products would be a terrible waste of management time and resources.
There’s no doubt Apple will be affected by this storm, they are going to lose sales and profits will suffer. The key to survival is to limit that damage and come through the other end with loyal customers and good products.