“While the Street frets about slowing iPod sales (or how everyone on earth might already have one), it’s easy to forget Apple’s range. Mac revenues grew 47% last quarter. Unit sales are expected to increase at a pace more than double the industry’s 11.6%, and Apple continues to gain share in the computer and phone markets,” Dow Jones Newswires reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Anyone who frets that everyone on earth might already have an iPod has severe math issues, at the very least. If they’re working on Wall Street — well, actually, that would explain a lot. Apple has sold a total of 140 million iPods to date. There are currently over 6.7 billion people on earth. Over 300 million are in the U.S. alone. The fact is: 2.1% of the world has an Apple iPod (it’s actually even less that that as many iPod owners have purchased more than one iPod). Let’s say that 750 million of the 6.7 billion people on earth can afford an iPod and have the infrastructure available to support such a device: that’s still only 18.7% market saturation.
Dow Jones Newswires continues, “Investors moaning about the four million iPhones sold so far forget that Apple had no mobile-phone presence just a year ago. Margins near 35% should improve with cheaper component prices, and Apple is rolling out its new operating system and iPhones overseas. In fact, Apple’s knack for packaging aspiration and creating things people feel compelled to own will stand it in good stead in a spending slowdown.”
“The new ‘MacBook Air,’ for instance, has inspired lust among existing laptop owners, and the buzz among young media types means consumer magazines will pant after it in print for months to come. If history holds true, profit taking in Apple will exhaust itself about 21 days after the earnings report (as was the case last year),” Dow Jones Newswires reports. “Last week, Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner called the selloff “overdone.” Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore has a 225 price target that is 73% higher than where shares trade today.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Jim" for the heads up.]
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