If you took the time to listen through Apple's hour-long Monday quarterly conference call recording, you were a little bored with life, and you probably overheard finance chief Peter Oppenheimer dropping a hint about "a key product transition" several times. According to Oppenheimer, this mysterious product transition will cut into Apple's hefty profit margin because the company intends to create a new, unknown product with "technologies and features others can't match". So, he didn’t say that it was going to suck. Heavy sigh of relief from all concerned.

As you all know, Apple has hefty margins by computing standards: over 30 percent compared to less than 20 for Dell, and just under 25 for HP. So, they must have something up their sleeve, something worth cutting into their margins, and the result of the premium that Apple charges for its products. However, Oppenheimer also said Apple "never wants to create a profit margin so wide that it creates an umbrella for rivals that lets them safely undercut Apple's pricing and steal sales." To top it all, Steve Jobs himself said in the press release that Apple is "busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months."

So, knowing what we don’t know, we know that Apple will bring something new and cheap to the market around September. The suggestions is that we're looking at mass market stuff here. Your guess is as good as ours, but here’s our two cents worth on this stuff.


•    Sharp price drop of Macs - I admit, this one sounds insane and is unlikely to happen. The company sold a record 2.5 million Macs in the second quarter, up almost three times the market growth rate. Macs and iPods combined now make up over 75 percent of Apple's bottom line. Mac market share is on the rise thanks to Vista’s stumbles and the iPod/iPhone hallo effect; over 50 percent of new users never owned a Mac before. According to Gartner, Apple is now the third computer vendor in the US with 8.5 percent market share. Mac market share gains came at the expense of competitors but it will be that much harder to keep the momentum now that Dell (31.9 percent) and HP (25.3 percent) are in Apple's sight. If Apple reduces prices of Mac desktops and mobiles to match comparable Windows PCs, it could sustain growth and continue stealing market share from competitors. But don't bet on it.

•    Refreshed, cheaper laptops and a sub-notebook - Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are approaching their end of life-cycle, according to the MacRumors Buyer's Guide. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also thinks there is 80 percent chance Apple will redesign MacBooks and MacBook Pros. A Commercial Times report suggests July-September as a target date for refreshed notebooks. Intel has just recently introduced the new Montevina (Centrino 2) platform so, it could be good timing. Munster thinks Apple will cut MacBook prices down to $999 (currently $1,099) and perhaps cut MacBook Air to $1,799. Besides this, Apple is believed to be developing a brand-new sub-notebook to compete with Asustek's EeePC. It would be a logical step now that Apple's premium laptops cover price points above $1000.

•    Refreshed, cheaper iPods - Apple will undoubtedly refresh iPods around September in time for this year's holiday season. Munster wrote in a report to his clients Tuesday that he expects "slightly redesigned iPods." The 9to5mac website reports of new multicolored iPod nanos that will feature multiple colors within the same units, double storage and new features. The website cites the same reliable sources who leaked iPod nano images that proved real and had to be removed at Apple's request. Analyst Munster also expects "lower-cost touch-based iPods" and everyone else seems to agree. By cutting the price of iPod shuffle from $69 to $49 in February this year, Apple effectively countered deceleration in iPod sales and re-energized interest in the music player product category. The company could use the same pricing strategy to create an irresistible value proposition for iPod touch. We expect more and more emphasis on iPod touch as Apple will likely phases out hard-drive based iPod classics soon.

•    Mac tablet - Some rumors never die. For a long time, a mobile phone from Apple was one of them. Despite Jobs' repeated claims that Apple is not developing a handset, Apple made the iPhone. Now that it's out there, the next such rumor is a multi-touch tablet aka Newton 2. Some analysts had expected a multi-touch device at the last WWDC but that didn’t happen. Apple already has all the technology to make a Mac tablet a reality. They nailed multi-touch with iPhone, their OS team can adapt OS X for practically any form factor and it even re-introduced handwriting recognition with iPhone 2.0 firmware - the user input method that made Newton famous. On top of that, Apple seems to want to use its newly acquired P.A. Semi engineering talent to make its own system on a chip for mobile devices, as Steve Jobs told the New York Times. Despite all this, many wonder why would Apple introduce Mac tablet? First of all, because Steve Jobs repeatedly said they wouldn't, as with the iPhone. When you think about it, Mac tablet would perfectly fit the void between iPhone and MacBook Air form factors. It would be an ultra-mobile device, about 1.5-2 times larger than the iPhone, small enough to carry in your pocket. Most importantly, it would be the perfect portable content creation device (as good as iPhone is, it is not aimed at content creation on the go). Among Apple tablet rumors, the old MacBook Touch rumor re-surfaced again.

•    iPhone nano - Why not? We all remember that iPod sales really took off when Apple first expanded the base hard-drive based model with flash-based nano. The iPhone nano would sport smaller dimensions: 25 percent smaller and perhaps 50 percent narrower. It should have the same touch screen featured in its bigger counterpart and the same resolution to retain compatibility with all iPhone software. A user-replaceable battery would be nice, but there are slim chances of that. The lack of 3G and GPS are almost certain. If it had a physical keyboard, that alone would be a huge boost to its popularity. We're thinking of 2GB and 4GB models at sub-$199 price points. If it works on any cellular network, this one would be a no-brainer for most people and it wouldn't cut into iPhone 3G sales.

Of course, we're only guessing, I mean, speculating.