Nike and Apple - if the shoe fits Apple is not the only company offering a shiny new toy this week. Nike will begin selling its latest shoe on Saturday - the LeBron X+, named for LeBron James, the Miami Heat forward. The gaudiest version of the shoe includes sensors that allow you to track yourself on the court and analyse and share the information using a mobile app. That "kit" can be used with other shoes too. A pair will sell for $270. Nike and Apple are alike in many ways, but also very different. Both have premium brands, but their financial positions diverge. Leverage from runaway sales growth has driven Apple's gross margins up 6 percentage points to 47 per cent in the past year. In Nike's case, revenue in the fourth quarter that ended in May rose 12 per cent to $6.5bn, its highest quarterly number. Nonetheless, cost of materials and labour in China helped push gross margins down 1.5 percentage points from the year before, the sixth consecutive annual decline. Net profit fell 8 per cent. Nike needs to bring in higher prices: what it charges now is not keeping up with costs. Basketball shoes may not be the problem. Nike's basketball category, which includes LeBron and Jordan lines, reported $2.2bn in revenue for fiscal 2012, up 17 per cent year on year. The general point holds, though: if a company is given credit for owning great brands, it should be able to protect margins. Despite a sharp drop in its share price after its latest earnings report, Nike still gets a premium rating from the stock market. Its shares trade at 19 times forward earnings, compared with a multiple of 17 times for rival Adidas. The latter has brand problems of its own, after cutting sales expectations for its Reebok line by a third on Friday. At $97 apiece, Nike's shares are less expensive than a pair of LeBrons. But they look overpriced unless the company's unimpressive margin performance improves soon.