“Is Apple’s growth slowing? That’s investors’ biggest concern,” Robert Holmes reports for TheStreet.
MacDailyNews Take: Any investor whose biggest concern is if Apple’s growth is slowing hasn’t been paying a bit of attention.
“Channing Smith, who manages the Capital Advisors Growth Fund (CIAOX), says he sees quite the opposite. He recently traveled to New York from his home base in Tulsa, Okla., and visited Apple’s retail store on Fifth Avenue. He was overwhelmed by the size of the crowds — even in the middle of the week,” Holmes reports. “‘You look around and you can see the insatiable demand for a product like the iPad 2,’ Smith says of the company’s most recent update of its hot-selling tablet. ‘It was almost too much. You couldn’t see anything. It was like a snake pit in there.'”
Holmes reports, “Smith says that although supply chain concerns could dog Apple, he believes analysts continue to underestimate Apple’s earnings power as well as the influence the company has on consumers. Even if a supply-chain disruption impacts the company in the next quarter or two, Smith isn’t concerned about Apple as an investment. ‘Apple products are meeting what consumers want, and consumers are willing to pay up for it,’ he says. ‘To me, it’s a setback but you’re shifting demand around that will be made up in a later quarter. We would stress to investors to stay focused on what they’re doing from a sales perspective and focus on the competition.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
The “competition”? Are we talking about those cheep crapy netbooks? Ask Acer and the other PC box makers if they are moving any of those cheep old school turds. It is killing their PC numbers. The total PC market is down 2 or 3 percent while Apple’s Mac sales are way up. Apple’s iOS devices are not counted. They just kill their PC bottom line.
Keep your heads in the sand and don’t count them. The Apple tsunami is here!
Exactly right. Even when Apple does not have enough inventory to meet demand, it is a delayed sale not a lost sale. At some point, supply will catch up and the sale is made.
For most other companies, if there is a waiting list for a product, the customer can get a similar competing product; that is a lost sale. The customer who wants an iPad (or iPhone) is not going to go get some Android device because there is a waiting list; he or she will wait and get an iPad.
Apple makes distinct and desirable products that are not available elsewhere; that is a clear advantage.
Is this guy for real? I live in Naperville, IL. He could have walked into our Apple store and witnessed the same thing. Better yet, go the store in Tulsa.
Well, I can see his point. Even in San Francisco, there is a big difference in atmosphere between going to the downtown store on Market Street and the one in Stonestown Mall, especially during product launches.
The last time I tried to show some family the iPad 2 when passing by the Naperville, IL Apple Store (about 1 to 2 weeks ago), I cracked up a bit in laughter.. it was a swarm! Everyone was testing out / playing on something. No iPad 2’s were left unattended, so we just walked in and out impressed by the huge amount of people in that store.
Just last Saturday there was a line to grab the next shipment of iPads.
That’s right. I’m waiting until April 28th, which is when my iPad 2 is scheduled to deliver. I’m sure as hell not going to go buy a pos Xune or playbook just because I’m impatient. I am impatient, but the copies are pieces of crap. I’ll wait for the real thing, and I imagine a lot of other people feel the same way.
Mine was set for the 28th too ….. Got word it is coming the 22nd ….
Sent our PC tech guy to Naperville Apple Store to exchange an iPad 2 cover and he was amazed at the crowd, he was there about 11am on Thursday thee 14th …..
Crowd was mostly 35 to 50 years old and they were all over everything in the store ….. everything and there were some 32 gig 3G iPads available but that was it ….
Robert Holmes: “… analysts continue to underestimate Apple’s earnings power as well as the influence the company has on consumers…”
DUH.
“Surprisingly, to this point, we’re just not seeing a meaningful competitor in the tablet market”
No, NOT surprisingly if you are a TechMaven. Please keep up.
“… we’ve been stunned by the time to market for the other big players. They’ve failed there.”
Didn’t we Apple fanbois predict this situation in the early fall of 2010? Yes we did. Right here at MDN in fact.
“Every day it becomes harder to compete with Apple.”
And WHY is that the case? It’s not Apple’s fault! It’s fault of the decayed state of the rest of the tech industry due to poor biznizz practices. Example: Microsoft spent 10 years trying to come up with a decent tablet and FAILed.
“After all, Apple is a computer company at its core.”
Yes, and the iPad and iPhone and iPod and Apple TV, as well as the Mac, are all computers at their core. Imagine that. 💡
The kicker is this: Apple products are meeting what consumers want, and consumers are willing to pay up for it.
End of Story.
Except they say “and consumers are willing to pay up for it” like Apple products are still premium priced, which really isn’t true any longer. $99 TV, $49 iPhone 3GS, $499 iPad, sub $1K best in class laptop… Apple today is the value leader. It continues to amaze people who have been fed and endless diet of the “Apple’s are overpriced” fodder.
However, the words “willing to pay for it” usually imply a higher price than competitors. In this case Apple’s pricing is lower.
The “cpmpetitors” may want to pick a different line of work!
You know itʻs really too bad that Apple is the only tech company getting components from Japan. Dell, HP , Moto et al will be totally unaffected by the disasters in Japan.
Of course that may be because they arenʻt selling anything.