Apple discounts G4 Cube to boost sales

Apple will on Monday offer UK customers a £250 discount on its cube-shaped Macintosh computer, in a move designed to pick up what have so far been poor sales of the device.

Customers will receive a discount of £250 when buying a G4 PowerMac Cube with a monitor between 23 October and 31 December 2000. Current prices start at £1249 excluding VAT for a 450Mhz system.

Apple this week missed downgraded profit estimates for its fourth quarter, citing lower than expected education sales and a slower than expected start for the G4 Cube, which it launched this summer.

Since its profit warning at the end of last month, Apple's share price has lost 60 per cent of its value.

Brendan O'Sullivan, Apple's European education director, said: "A reduction is the polite way to refer to this [share price] at the moment. With recent moves on the stock market you could have been forgiven for thinking we had made a loss.

"However, we had a reasonably good quarter. We brought in revenue of $1.9bn and we were aiming in the region of $2bn. It was a smidgen under what we would have liked. Year on year we grew 40 per cent worldwide."

But O'Sullivan said the G4 Cube "hasn't been as fast a seller as we would have wanted. We need to address this, the price point is too high."

"In my personal opinion some people have also mistaken parts of the design as structural issues," he added, referring to recent suggestions that the clear Perspex casing of the Cube was flawed resulting in cracks appearing.

"In reality, we believe we have invented in the Cube, one of the most beautiful PCs on the market. To manufacture one of these things is really hard. The reality of life is that when making something in clear plastic you can sometimes see that mould line - there is no way to hide it, and I think we have been harshly criticised and unfairly penalised for this," he said.

Newly appointed Apple UK and Ireland regional director Mark Rogers said staff at Apple remain confident about the device: "You should see the smiles on the faces of the people who manufacture it."