Apple questioned about netbooks during conference call

Today, Apple held their quarterly conference call to report earnings to the shareholders. They reported that they saw $1.21 billion in profit, which is up $160 million from this time last year. Not bad, I guess. I mean, it’s the best 2nd quarter Apple has ever had, but we are in an awesome state of economy right now, so this was quite expected. Money, money, money, but the interesting part of the conference call for me was the Q&A towards the end. Specifically, the question about an Apple netbook.

We’ve heard about the mythical Apple netbook for some time now, so either the community really wants it, or Apple is actually in the process of building something. Either way, Apple would be stupid to overlook this growing portion of the notebook sales. MacRumors has a nice transcription of today’s conference call, which is from where I’m pulling the following netbook question and Tim Cook’s answer.

Q: New thoughts on the Netbook at this point?

A: For us it’s about doing great products. When I’m looking at what’s sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on. As it exists today, we’re not interested in nor would it be something customers would be interested in the long term. We are looking at the space. For those who want a small computer that does browsing/email, they might want an iPhone or iPod Touch. If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. We’ve historically exceeded the market rate of growth, especially given this economy is an extraordinary achievement. These netbook sales are propping up the unit numbers for the industry. We are very pleased with our performance.

So Tim at least tried to make it look like Apple has little interest in netbooks. Or did he?

If you recall the history of Apple products, you might notice a pattern. The Mac wasn’t the first computer, the iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player, and the iPhone certainly wasn’t the first cell phone. But what all of these products have in common is that they were all in response to what was wrong with products already available.

Today, Tim Cook told us that when Apple looks at netbooks, they “see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software.” I’m betting that Apple is indeed working on a netbook. And I’m also betting that it doesn’t have a cramped keyboard, isn’t junky, the screen won’t be as small as it can be, and it likely has and/or will have good software.

So, while Apple may brush the topic aside publicly, I think there is something more going on behind closed doors. What do you think? Am I just being a fanboy, or is Apple not showing all of their cards?