Apple's "Mystery Product"

During Apple's quarterly earnings call on July 21, Peter Oppenheimer referred to a "product transition" that will drop their gross margins by over 3%.
(Apple Insider covers it well here)


There's quite a bit of speculation everywhere about what the could mean. Many of the speculators are focused on hardware such as tablets and lower cost laptops. Piper Jaffray even goes so far as to put an 80% likelyhood on the move to below $1k for a 13 inch notebook.
(Apple Insider talks about it here)


I believe it's likely that this is an iTunes transition to either a full or partial subscription model.
I think by go subscription, Apple opens a somewhat steadier stream of revenue for music - and protects their device market at the same time. Imagine: so long as you are playing music from your primary Mac or a networked device like Apple TV 0r bringing it with you on an iPod/iPhone - they can sell you play-only rights to most songs for one price ($9.95 perhaps to match Rhapsody?) Buying songs to be used on any non-apple mp3 device could cost per song as it does now.