“Piper Jaffray Senior Analyst Gene Munster maintained an ‘outperform’ rating and $60 price target on Apple Computer as sales increase and lead time decreases for the iPod nano,” Maya Roney reports for Forbes. ‘We expect the iPod to continue to be a foundation for growth in other parts of Apple’s business, and we expect that by the end of calendar 2005 more than 37 million iPods will have shipped, providing Apple with a greater scope of awareness for various products (‘halo’ effect),’ said Munster.”
Roney reports, “The number of Macintosh computers in Amazon’s Top 10 also increased to eight from seven, setting an all-time high since Munster began tracking the Top Sellers. ‘Apple’s domination in digital music is a critical piece to the story, but we do not believe the iPod is the only growth avenue for the company,’ said the analyst.”
Full article here.
[UPDATE: 10:45pm ET: Rewrote headline to state “by the end of 2005.”]
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Related articles:
UBS: Mac momentum continues building, Apple could sell 10 million iPods in holiday quarter – October 03, 2005
Citigroup raises Apple Computer share price target, expects 10 million iPod nanos sold in 2005 – September 26, 2005
Hell, I ordered two black 30 gig video enabled iPods today as gifts.
Ordering two nanos next week.
I am going to be the favorite person of the Christmas season amongst my family and friends.
Let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves again, just so when they ship 36.9 million the stock can plummet.
I can see the headlines now
“Apple shares nosedive!!” Fine print later … on sales of gazillion and 3 instead of gazillion and 2 ..
If they can find a negative they will ….
I meant the other way around … oh forget it …
hey cuz… don’t forget me!!!!!!
Betcha the analyst means 37 million total units from first release a few years ago. Regardless, these are heady times. Yup, yup, yup.
Anyone done the math (from the quarterly reports) of where Apple stands today? In other words, how many iPods to they have to ship this Chirstmas shopping season to make 37M for the year?
MDN word: sort
is anyone else sick of these predictions? Why don’t they just say that sales are expected to be strong and leave it at that. We all know they are pulling the specific numbers out of their asses. Why 37 million, why not 36 or 38?
If Apple were to release sales estimates or target, that would be one thing … but that is clearly not the case here.
Sounds like someone’s is running another “pump-and-dump” on AAPL again. Funny, it’s so soon after the last one.
Anyway, I need to accumulate so whatever.
To JadisOne: You might not be!. Two of them are going to be wondering why the didn’t get videos!
The headline is completely misleading and false. I am not here to bash Apple; on the contrary, I love apple products, the company and am long AAPL stock. But here is the math:
In order for Apple to ship 37M ipods in 2005, they would have to ship 19M in this quarter alone. Of the various analysts reports out on Apple, the current estimates for this quarter are based on iPod unit shipments of 9M to 9.4M. This is consistent with what Gene Munster actually said:
“..and we expect that by the end of calendar 2005 more than 37 million iPods will have shipped..”
By the end of 2005, Apple will have shipped over 37M iPods in total since the iPod was first introduced in 2001. As of September 2005, Apple has shipped just over 28M iPods in total. So, shipping 9M more this quarter is how Munster got to the 37M.
I believe the analysts are probably being a little conservative in their numbers and that the number will be higher than 9M iPods shipped this quarter. In the past 2 holiday quarters, Apple doubled their iPod shipments from the September to the December quarter. If they did so again, they would ship close to 13M iPods this quarter. That number is probably much too optimistic but 9M seems more than reasonable.
In any case, that article should be re-issued with a corrected headline. The analyst was not unreasonable but the headline makes it seem like he might be.
As the #1 global brand and one of the most innovative companies, I believe Apple should continue to have strong growth prospects for quite some time.
Watch fo Apple to break the 5% after the reults form this quarter come in. That news should wake up some of those investors.
I hate to sound unsupportive of Apple but I don’t think they could make 37 million iPod units in 2005 let alone ship ’em.
It’s amazing how long lost cousins appear around Christmas.
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To tango:
You’re right. But fortunately they all don’t know each other.
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I have 14 iPods, they are too beautiful.
Darren – thanks for the insightful comments. Yeah, MDN is guilty of over pumping and spinning in Apple’s favor too often. Not that Apple doesn’t deserve fair commentary, but MDN over steps at times.
MDN word: labor
Yeah, and the sun rises in the east.
I refer to this site as a “mac tabloid”. Complaining about the mac “Rah Rah” here is like complaining to the ladies in the supermarket checkout line about the National Enquirer.
Why hasn’t Shaw Wu come out with a 40 Million sales number..??
Morons.
>by the end of calendar 2005 more than 37 million iPods will have shipped
And even after saturation we’ll still have the replacement market, upgrades in features and storage capacity, new form factors and functionality.
Apple needs video to keep the thirst for capacity healthy. A hundred movies on an iPod? Make it two-hundred and 10,000 songs AND 20,000 pictures and … hey … with a second iPod for backup, my computer could stop acting like a warehouse.
By 2040 you’ll pay Apple to load a new iPod with bricks-and-mortar-library-sized collections of music, video, images, and books. The iPod itself will be free.
You read it here first.
Apple has sold 17.917 million iPods this calendar year, which gets added to the 10 million milestone that was reached at the end of CY2004 to make 27.917.
So Gene’s 37 million figure actually only requires Apple to manufacture, ship and sell just over 9 million iPods this quarter.
In reality, Apple is more likely to sell around 12.5 million iPods this quarter, (my guess on mix would be around 8 million nanos, 3 million iPods and 1.5 million shuffles), which would mean that Apple will have sold over [B]30 million[/B] iPods in 2005 alone, probably at an average of around $200 a unit.