The Fourth Quarter Should Be Ugly for Apple

On Monday, August 01, 2005, self-described “Principal Analyst” Rob Enderle of the one-man Enderle Group (unless you count Rob’s wife, which obviously he does, hence his usage of the word “Group” in the title of his tax write-off) wrote an article for TechNewsWorld in which he stated:

“As demand for a new product goes up, demand for existing products goes down, which is part of the risk Apple took when pre-announcing the move to x86. Recent surveys indicate demand for Apple’s existing products is dropping like a rock as a result.”

One week later, on Monday, August 8, 2005, Enderle tacked the following onto some tripe about Windows Longhorn that he wrote for TechNewsWorld:

“One other thing: Several folks questioned my comment that Apple demand was dropping like a rock and referred to past sales performance to refute this. Demand is measured by surveys of buying intent and I rely on surveys done for the financial firms who follow Apple. Unfortunately I don’t have the rights to share the results. But the financial reports you have seen are based on sales before Apple announced the Intel move — and the impact of that development won’t show up in the financial reports until after this quarter ends. If the studies are to be believed, the fourth quarter, in particular, should be ugly for Apple.”

Now to be fair – even though fairness should be out of bounds for this one – Enderle did tack on one weak attempt at an ass-saver with:
“Granted, forward-looking studies are often unreliable, but the study I’m now using did accurately predict that last quarter would be very strong.”

Judgement Day Must Wait

While Apple Computer, Inc. did today report the highest revenue and earnings in the Company’s history, we had originally stated that it sounded to us like Enderle was referring not to Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter (Q4 05) which ended today, but the fourth calendar quarter of 2005 (Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2005). So, to be fair, Judgement Day will have to wait until we hear Apple’s Q1 06 (Jan. 18) results for October-December 2005. That’s okay, we’re patient, and the Mac with our iCal reminder of this story has a current uptime approaching 6 months, so we think we have a good chance of being ready to see how Enderle did on next earnings day. Even if we forget, we’re sure your “What about Enderle” emails will remind us as they did today. Thanks to all. We’re very interested to see if Apple’s Mac demand “drops like a rock” during 2005′s holiday shopping season. If it does, we’ll gladly credit Enderle and his surveys for breaking the news back in August.

For the record, Apple shipped 1,236,000 Macintosh units in Apple’s Q4 05 ended today, following up strongly on the 1,182,000 Macs shipped in Apple’s Q3 05, and showing 48 percent growth in Mac unit shipments year over year.

Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple Q4 05 earnings report: best quarter & best year in company history – October 11, 2005
Enderle: ‘Surveys indicate demand for Apple’s products is dropping like a rock’ due to Intel switch – August 01, 2005
Tech Pundit Enderle: ‘fourth quarter should be ugly for Apple’ – August 09, 2005