[gnicholas]

In the meantime, retailers like Best Buy can sell units that have already been imported to the US, and Apple can still sell the SE.

I wonder if Apple preemptively imported a ton of watches for resale, to give them some breathing room. I imagine the post-Christmas period is relatively slow, and they’ll likely refresh the watches in May. Would it be possible for them to stuff the resale channels with 3 months of inventory, and then just move to a new generation of watches at WWDC?

[0xB31B1B]

Outside of their own apple stores Apple is not managing or storing inventory for retail sale. A shipment for bestbuy or Amazon will almost always go straight from the origin to the retailer logistics hub in the US.

[gnicholas]

Agreed; the question is whether Apple encouraged retailers to take on large inventories on a preemptive basis. It's in the retailers' interests to load up so that they're not left dry for an extended period. The only possible bad outcome for them is if they load up but then Apple settles, and they're not able to move it fast enough. But Apple could offer to buy back excess in order to alleviate this concern. It would seem like Apple and the retailers would want to work together 'against' Masimo here, since they both make money by stuffing the channel. I don't know if there are any ITC rules against this type of behavior during the pendency of an injunction.

[riley_dog]

Why May? They were just introduced in September.

[gnicholas]

I was thinking that was the soonest event at which they regularly announce new products. They probably weren’t intending to revamp for a year, but under the circumstances they’ll probably update sooner (or settle).