MWTY Expo - Apple Now Producing iMac In Volume. The catch? $100 Price Hike.

by , 10:15 PM EST, March 20th, 2002

At the MACWORLD Tokyo keynote, Steve Jobs announced that iMacs were now in production with 'over 5,000' shipping per day. However, component costs have caused a $100 price increase across the board. From the Apple press release:

"Customer demand for the new iMac has been off the charts and we have simply been unable to keep up with it. We are now in volume production, shipping over 5,000 new iMacs per day, and hope to catch up with demand soon," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "We appreciate our customers' and resellers' patience during this ramp-up period."

Additionally, due to the recent dramatic rise in component pricing, each of the new models' prices have risen accordingly.

"Rapidly increasing component costs is an industry-wide issue right now. Since the new iMac's launch in January, memory costs have tripled and flat-panel costs have increased twenty-five percent, with little relief in sight," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Some manufacturers are de-configuring their models in response to these rising costs - reducing memory and disk drive capacity, for example. We've chosen to raise prices by $100 and stick with our three fully-configured new iMac models."

You can read the full release at Apple's website.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Unless we're missing something here, the price hike seems to make perfect sense. Nobody likes these, but would you rather accept a machine with less power and resources, or chip in an extra hundred bucks?

Either way, it's pleasing to see that the iMacs are now in high volume production. Those of you who have been waiting for weeks on end for your new Mac should find some relief soon.

PR: Apple In Volume Production of New iMacs