Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. plans to offer its first Macintosh notebook priced at less than $1,000 this holiday shopping season to attract budget-conscious U.S. consumers stung by the global economic crisis.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs cut the price on the current MacBook models to $999 today at an event at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. He also introduced an aluminum-clad version with a glass display that will sell for $1,299 and updated the MacBook Pro line with slimmer models.

The stock fell 5.6 percent. Investors may be concerned the price reduction won't be big enough to persuade consumers to buy amid the economic slump, said Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster. Apple gets half its revenue from the Mac, with laptop sales climbing at more than twice the pace of desktops last year. The MacBook is Apple's best-selling machine, Jobs said.

``People wanted a price cut,'' Munster, based in Minneapolis, said in an interview today. ``They wanted $900 MacBooks.'' Still, consumers probably will be impressed with the new designs, which represent a ``substantial upgrade.'' The current MacBook, enclosed in a white plastic casing, had sold for $1,099.

``Demand is going to be good,'' Jobs, 53, said of the MacBooks. ``We're making a lot of them.''

Jobs also showed new versions of the ultra-portable MacBook Air and the more powerful Pro laptops with more memory and faster graphics chips from Nvidia Corp. The Pro model, which measures 0.95 inches (2.4 centimeters) thick, will go on sale tomorrow for $1,999, the same as the previous model.

The updated MacBook Air, which is less than 1 inch thick, will be released in November. The starting price remains at $1,799.

New Air

Apple gets more than 80 percent of its revenue from consumers and half of its sales from the U.S., according to New York-based analyst Toni Sacconaghi at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. The U.S. is the largest market for PCs overall, and consumer purchases of portable computers have driven much of the industry's gains over the past three years.

While predicting PC growth in 2009 is difficult, given the economic environment, Sacconaghi said Apple's Mac shipments may still rise 13 percent while the rest of the market stagnates.

Apple fell $6.18 to $104.08 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 47 percent this year amid waning consumer confidence and concern about Jobs's health.

On Oct. 3, the stock fell as much as 5.4 percent after CNN's iReport.com reported erroneously that Jobs had a heart attack. Today, he joked about his health, giving his blood pressure and declining to take any other questions on it.

Consumer Sentiment

U.S. retailers may post the smallest holiday sales gain in six years, according to the National Retail Federation, which predicted a 2.2 percent increase this year.

Even so, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its share-price estimate to $125 from $110 on optimism the new MacBooks will help Apple win a greater share of customers in the U.S. and Western Europe. The $999 price broadens the potential audience for the Mac, while the updated models offer more value for the money, analyst David Bailey said in a report today.

``The company continues to emphasize features and functionality over price alone, which we think will continue to differentiate Apple and allow it to continue to grow faster than the overall PC market,'' the New York-based analyst said. He advises investors to buy the shares.

Apple surpassed Acer Inc. in the calendar second quarter to become the third-biggest maker of PCs in the U.S., according to research firm Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. Apple trails Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

Mac shipments have topped 2 million units for the past four quarters. Sales in the quarter ended in September may have climbed to a record 2.8 million machines on back-to-school demand, according to Munster. Apple reports fourth-quarter results Oct. 21.

To contact the reporter on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 14, 2008 16:31 EDT