Alarm bells are beginning to ring over Apple's recent sales performance. The first four months of the year saw enormous demand for Apple kit. But not now: this week ZDNET reported that Ingram Micro is sitting on 15 weeks worth of inventory in the US. And today we have an article piling up the gloom from Digitimes, the Taiwanese electronics news service.

“Despite strong sales in the first four months of the year, sources said that iMac demand started to ebb away in May. That has particularly hit suppliers as Apple Computer holds off on purchases until it clears inventory built on its earlier, optimistic forecast.”

Maybe a quiet sales period will help Apple get its QA act together. Mutterings over the company’s kit are getting louder, as this artful piece by Charles Wright, of the Melbourne Age, shows. ®