American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu expects Apple will sell 7.1 million iPods in the current quarter, according to a report by Macworld UK’s Jonny Evans.
This current quarter is Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter. Apple’s fiscal year 2005 runs from September 26, 2004 to September 24, 2005. Apple sold 6.155 million iPod units (all models) in their fiscal third quarter (ended June 25, 2005), shocking many on Wall Street — no analyst estimates came close to Apple’s iPod unit sales, with the highest being around 5.5 million — and evaporating the fears of many of a rumored (obviously baseless) iPod slowdown. Wu’s 7.1 million iPod units estimate is a good 15-percent over the previous quarter.
“The analyst also describes Samsung’s ‘readiness’ to reduce flash memory prices by up to 50 per cent. This revelation follows recent news that Apple has acquired 40 per cent of Samsung’s flash memory output,” Evans reports. “With this in mind he states he has, ‘higher conviction that flash will replace microdrives at 4GB capacities.’ Previously he has seen 4GB flash-based iPods as unfeasible, because of the cost of such memory.” ‘Our sources tell us that Samsung was willing to drop its prices aggressively to lock in a marquee customer and win back some business from Toshiba, Apple’s other flash supplier. Interestingly, we believe Apple will also likely source from Hynix, adding a third flash supplier and thus further driving down pricing to protect its gross margin,’ he added.”
Full article here.
Wu really needs to take a closer look at his Apple stock price target of $42. He seems a bit low on that one. As for the iPod units prediction, what do you think? Is Wu too low, too high, or just about right?
Apple sold 6.155 million iPod units in their fiscal 2005 third quarter ended June 25, 2005, 5.311 million iPod units during its fiscal 2005 second quarter ended March 26, 2005 and 4.58 million iPod units during its fiscal 2005 first quarter ended December 25, 2004. In its fiscal 2004 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2004, Apple sold 2.016 million iPod units.
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TheStreet.com dubiously concludes that iPod demand has slowed, could impact Apple earnings – July 06, 2005
I think the estimates are low and could go much higher, especially if Apple releases new iPod models (flash or not) in September.
I think, for once, he is dead-on. Which means the stock will probably tank when they announce it.
Kevin,
The quarter ends on September 24, 2005 – an new iPod model(s) won’t impact this quarter and therefore wouldn’t affect estimates.
FWIW: 7.45 million iPods will be sold this quarter.
Good news. Need some. got the eye of the hurtrican last night. on generator power now. Glad iPod is already charged.
I just found this site and I see that it’s linked to MacDailyNews.
I LOVE my iPod. I need a new PC. Do I just get another PC or should I try a Mac? I want to try a Mac, but…
I know you’ll tell me to junk the Dell, but I have already purchased MS Office and Windows XP and a few other programs. I really use the PC for Web, email, chat, word processing, budgeting, music (iTunes), digital photos (I do own Photoshop Elements), and watching DVDs. I’m a student – I really can’t afford to buy new operating system for $200 and a Mac version of Office for god-knows-how much. Any advice?
Allen, check out http://www.apple.com/switch
As for a new Mac, you’ll find that much of what you need already comes with the Mac, iLife 05 can’t be touched on the Windows side. Also, if you decide to defect from the “dark-side” you can get the “Student and Teacher” edition of MS Office 2004 for Mac for a reasonable price, and there’s also iWork, which is a nice little package with Pages (word processing, MS Word compatible) and Keynote (a PowerPoint-like presentation application).
Oh yeah, and you can forget about viruses and malware, OS X is, at the moment, immune.
Allen…..
it’s a question of long term vs short term costs. I know that right now switching to a mac might cost you in transfering some of your office software over to the mac…. but only if you actually buy that software. Every document you purchase will be readable by the mac, and you can even save it in .doc form to share with your non-mac friends if you absolutely have to.
look at the mac mini. I bought one for my son in college. He switched over from a dell because of the worms and viruses. There have been no reported mac viruses. Not some, not a few, none, zero, nada.
His transition was short, took about a week. I got him a two button mouse, He loved the mac experience from the very first time he plugged it in. Seriously – it just works.
I know it’s scary….. but go for it. It’s the one computing decision you won’t ever regret.
MDN word is “month” as in
don’t wait a month to get this done.
Jim
My advice to you is to buy a Mac mini. Look for a used one on e-bay if you have to. I junked my Wintel computer in January when I got an iBook and I haven’t looked back since. Now it is torture for me to use the Dell at work! Anyway, what a lot of switchers don’t know (and I didn’t either) is that Apple includes word processing and spreadsheet programs with your purchase. There is absolutely NO need to buy Office for Mac. Appleworks works great. On top of that, iLife, with iPhoto is included. I use that instead of Photoshop to keep my costs low, as I’m on a budget too. The Mac comes with almost all the software you need, including tons of fonts, right out of the box. Get a Mac and don’t look back! Just a heads up, it might take a month or two before you get really comfortable using Mac OS. I highly recommend reading ‘Switching to the Mac” which is a book that explains everything on Macs and the same functions on Windows to help guide you. The book is published by a company named O’Reilly. Good luck and enjoy your new Mac!
Allen, one more thing that might ease your mind.
My son’s major in college is Graphic Design. He also uses the computer for web surfing, chat, digital photos, itunes, creating movies, publishing to the web, blogging, writing term papers,….. all of that stuff.
He had some of the same concerns, and a lot of his friends tried to talk him out of it. His computer has not crashed once, or given him one bit of problem since he got it. He plugged his current monitor, keyboard, and new wireless scrolling mouse I got him into his mac… and away he went.
The hardest part of the switch was learning where everything was, and in his own words. “this is too easy, it can’t be this easy dad.”
good luck…. post again and let us know what you decide.
MDN word is country, as in
how much longer will the people in this country settle for an inferior produc by not purchasing macs?
Allen…as a student, you can buy a brand new Mac mini for only $479 that already includes Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and iLife ’05. Also being a student, you can buy MS Office 2004 Student/Teacher Edition for only $99 after rebate (or even cheaper than that at some retailers if you look hard enough). Good luck, you won’t regret the decision if you go for it.
Alien,
I have helped a lot of people to switch and the biggest thing is finding out where everthing is and getting used to doing things the easy way instead of the complicated way. A lot of times a good idea is to start out by getting to know one Mac program really well because there is a lot of consistency between different apps on the Macs and so learning how to do something on one app will a lot of times be the same for a lot of other apps. Here are some good free on line video tutorials that could help you out a lot too.
http://www.atomiclearning.com/macintosh
http://www.apple.com/pro/training/macosx_basics/
Good luck and I hope you can get a Mac soon. Life is too short to spend any of it suffering thru windoze when you could be enjoying the Mac Experience.
Allen –
A Mac mini is a viable alternative for the tasks you listed:
– Web : Firefox & Safari are excellent browsers. Both free.
– Email : As long as your email system isn’t MS Exchange, you’ve got good support here. Mail is a very good POP & IMAP mail client, included as part of OSX.
– Chat : Adium (free) is the Trillian of OSX – supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc. simultaneously. iChat (free with OSX) supports .Mac and AIM
– Word Processing / Budgeting : There are free solutions, but I’d go with MS Office 2004. The Student edition is much more affordable than the Pro edition. iWork is *more* affordable, but the word processor isn’t as robust as Word, and there’s no spreadsheet (yet).
– Music : iTunes is even smoother on OSX, and there are oodles of plug-ins and third-party tools that don’t exist for Windows.
– Digital Photos : Collecting, albuming, etc. is easier in iPhoto (free) than in anything Windows gives you. I believe Adobe offers a really good deal on “crossgrading” from your existing Windows license to an OSX license.
– Photo Editing : For real oomph, you might want something beefier than the Mac mini. Maybe an iMac g5? (refurbed on the apple site for $899)
– DVD’s : no probem.
You may drop more initially on the hardware for a Mac (maybe not, if you go with the mini), but you’re going to get much better performance-per-dollar, a much longer useful lifespan, and no worries (for now) about spyware, viruses, etc.
Plus, all the good iTMS un-DRMing programs are for OSX.
Or, Allen you could buy a refurbished or used one.
They might be a little beat up, slower, or not it warrenty, but at least you’ll still have OS X.
The educational discount w/ the mini might be a better idea though, and I think you get a free iPod mini (check on that [since you have an iPod, you could sell one]. And you can always sell your Windows software.
Thanks EV1 and everyone else for the information. You guys are so helpful!
You know what, screw it – I’m going to do it, but I want a laptop. What’s the difference between a PowerBook and an iBook for someone like me? Is the PowerBook overkill? Is the iBook not enough? I’d like to do that two monitor thing I saw in an Apple store with a laptop and a monitor. I have a VGA monitor (20″) that’s still good. Could I do the two monitor setup with the Apple laptops (not a mirror of the laptop monitor – the kind where you can increase the screen real estate and put different things on both) ?
Sorry for all of the questions.
Allen –
The hardware in the iBook is capable of extending the desktop to an external monitor, but the weasels at Apple have crippled it to prevent it from doing so. Also, the max. resolution on the iBook is limited to 1024×768. There are ways to hack these limitations, but they *will* void your warranty.
Otherwise, the iBook is a great general purpose computing portable & can take a beating.
The Powerbook line packs a bit more processing punch, especially on the grafix side. They’ve got the good fast FW interface, too. Much more of a productivity machine. If you wish you had a PowerMac but you really need a portable, this is the way to go. They’re also (in my exprience) slightly more fragile.
Check the Apple refurbs page (big “sale” icon on the apple store page) for good discounts on previous-model iBooks and Powerbooks. They’re deeply discounted (sometimes 40-50% off the sticker price) and they carry the same 1 year warranty & you can purchase AppleCare for them, as well.
Good luck!
Allen,
Adobe Photoshop Elements is a dual platform package, Windows and Mac (at least ver. 2 is). So you already own some software for your new Mac!
If you do lots of graphics, check out GraphicConvertor. It’s shareware that comes bundled with some Macs, and is reasonable to buy otherwise. Find it at:
http://www.lemkesoft.com
You can never have too many tools in your toolbox!
If you need Office, as many have already pointed out, it is available for a student discount. If you are in college, check the bookstore and computer center – they may have a site license under which you may be eligible for even better pricing. And you can try to sell your old copy of Office, if it has only been installed once, there is another legal install left with it. Or sell the whole system. Some dude will be excited to get a Dell!
Also, as a point of clarification, Mac OS X is included in the price of the computer. So that is one expense you will not have. (Next year, when “Leopard” is released, you’ll have to decide whether to upgrade for $$$ or stay with Tiger. But that’s all in the future.)
A second monitor added to an iBook mirrors the iBook display, on the PowerBook it is additional desktop. (although there is a hack that can enable this function on the iBook) PowerBooks have the edge, faster drives, faster processors, (that cool sweet brushed aluminum) but they are also more expensive. Get an iBook now and upgrade to the PowerBook after you graduate.
Don’t get MS Office for Mac go to http://www.opensource.org and get NeoOffice/J all the same funtionality and its FREE!.