“In reporting fiscal second-quarter results in April, Apple said it sold more than 4 million Macs during quarter, up 7% from the same period a year ago. By comparison, technology-research firm Gartner Inc. said that during the first three months of the year, worldwide PC shipments rose just 1.9% from last year’s first quarter,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch, “‘The iMac is doing pretty well,’ said Stephen Baker, PC analyst with NPD Group. ‘We continue to see more households that, when they do change a computer, they add a Mac. For Apple, it’s definitely a positive business that is chugging along.'”
“It’s been a little more than a year since Apple upgraded the iMac, but you couldn’t be blamed for not remembering that. The company didn’t hold any kind of special event to show off the iMac’s ‘next-generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, groundbreaking high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology and a new FaceTime HD camera,'” Crum reports. “But with Apple’s annual developers’ conference set to start on June 11, there has been growing belief that the company will soon show off a new iMac in a big way, ahead of the back-to-school and holiday-shopping seasons.”
Crum reports, “This year, analysts such as Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital say they expect a major new launch of the Mac line to come soon. In a note, he wrote that the new products will include the iMac as well as MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, to be released in June. Such moves would coincide with Apple’s developer show. Reitzes said it is likely the Mac line will feature the retina-display technology used in the iPad, as well as the new Ivy Bridge quad-core processors from Intel Corp.”
Read more in the full article here.
Analyst, schmanalyst. Why pray would Apple bother to refresh any of it’s line of Macs? They’re perfect just the way they are. So what if everyone expects Retina displays across the board? So what if Intel just released a who bunch of new chips? So what all the Macs are past their prime? So what if WWDC’s keynote is in two weeks?
Seriously, did someone pay him to state the obvious?
So you’d refuse on principle to be paid to write something obvious? I’m sure your bosses would love to hear you say that.
Analyst, as a rule of thumb, are the last people I would pay any attention to. The only requirement to be an analyst that I can tell, is the ability to pull totally untrue facts out of their butts. I would suggest that they form their own club to be known as, Mind farts from hit whores international.
Your analysis of the situation is quite analytical, you know.
What about the Mac Pro? Many are clamoring for an update.
“One of the many” also waiting here.
Me Three!!
Yo
Analyst expects major new launch of Apple’s Mac line soon
Duh! You think?
But, Now, Now – in the MDN and the linked articles, there is no mention of the Mac Pro. It always seems to be forgotten. Yet, there is certainly demand for a Mac Pro refresh.
Analysts are now predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow. They say that it has been 18 hours since the last refresh of the sun and another sunrise is likely due soon.
One analyst stated the sun will not rise in Antarctica tomorrow. Other analysts have repeated the story omitting the location merely saying “the sun has been reported not to be rising tomorrow.” Roosters over the whole US are said to be in panic…
The Mac Pro, or lack thereof, was the topic of discussion for two breaks on this past week’s Tech Night Owl.
It would be a bit strange to announce new macs at WWDC since they would be expected to focus more on iOS 6 and Mountain Lion.
However I would dearly love new MBPs to be released. The timing would be bad to some extent since this is edu buying season and Apple usually tries to offload the current versions to run down inventory.
As for Mac Pros – how many does Apple sell anymore? 50K, maybe 100K a quarter. At an average ASP of say $2500, that’s only $25M in revenue. Tim Cook maybe looking at that and saying is there much point spending considerable R&D on that product line. They could keep the same box format and simply update the components as needed. Sounds harsh but Apple need to be competitive in the growing markets (i.e. mobile) and focus innovation there.
Correction – $250M in revenue.
Yeah, you are sooo right. Any business that can only make a quarter of a billion on a single product line should drop it.Is there any way that you can get Tim Cook fired and take his place? We can all forgive your math mistakes and arm chair quarterbacking skills. Apple needs you to take them to new heights of stupidity.
Man did you forget to take your pills today?
Average ASP? The A in ASP means average,so ‘average Average Selling Price’. ATM machine, PIN number…
The iMac better be insanely great!!!
“This year, analysts such as Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital say they expect a major new launch of the Mac line to come soon. ”
Wow! So there still are geniuses around!
I see a better future, now.
I think Apple may also come out with a replacement for the Mac Pro. Will it be the next Mac Pro? Maybe. But it may be a smaller computer, with room for 2 rather than 4 drives, and cost less. How do I know this? I don’t, it’s just a guess.
But since Apple hasn’t been selling tons and tons of Mac Pros, they may simply scale the Pro down a notch or two, still with the hottest capabilities, just fewer HD bays. Nobody REALLY needs a computer with 4 HD bays. Two would be fine. If you need more drives, just plug in some external drives or hook up to a network. And maybe they’ll rename it, maybe not. How about the Mac Pro II or the Mac iPro?
Also, I think many more people are buying external HDs, and with Thunderbolt and USB 3, hooking up really fast, external HDs is SO much easier today. And why would anyone want external HDs? Well, they’re already doing it with the iMac. It makes it so much easier to get a NEW computer up to snuff: just load all your old files onto it using the external HD.
I’ve got a small La Cie rack next to my iMac with six peripheral devices in or on it, and I hook up my iPhone, my iPod touch, and my iPod nano to some of those devices each evening. I couldn’t obtain the data transfer speeds from an external HD before Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is a game changer.
So, a smaller tower computer may replace the Mac Pro with a smaller form factor, but even more capability than the current Mac Pro or any other Mac (or PC for that matter).