Apple cuts MacBook prices by up to $200

Customers look at MacBook Pros, during the official opening of the largest Apple shop in southern Europe, at Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona July 28, 2012.

REUTERS - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) cut the price on the base version of its 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop with "retina" display by $200 as it revamps its top-end laptops, weeks after the company reported a steep decline in Mac sales in the holiday quarter.

Investors have worried that Apple's iPad is cannibalizing its Mac range, but Chief Executive Tim Cook has brushed aside these concerns.

The company sold 4.1 million Macs in the December quarter, down 21 percent from a year earlier. (r.reuters.com/nyw85t)

Apple also missed Wall Street's revenue forecast for the third straight quarter in January after iPhone sales came in below expectations, fanning fears that its dominance of consumer electronics is slipping.

The iPhone maker said on Wednesday the base version of the MacBook Pro with retina display will now be priced at $1,499, and introduced a new 2.6 gigahertz processor, 256 gigabytes flash memory version for $1,699. (link.reuters.com/vuw85t)

Apple also lowered the price of its 13-inch MacBook Air laptop with 256 gigabytes of flash memory to $1,299 from $1,399.

The company upgraded its 15-inch MacBook Pro with a faster 2.4 gigahertz quad-core processor and the top-end 15-inch notebook with a new 2.7 gigahertz quad-core processor and 16GB of memory.

Apple shares were down 0.6 percent at $465 in early trading on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)