Shares of Apple Computer, Inc. (AAPL) rose $1.92, or 2.58%, to close at $76.30 in NASDAQ trading today to hit a new all-time high on volume of 25,086,676 shares. In After Hours trading, Apple tacked on another $0.09 to $76.39 at the time of this report.
SanDisk Corporation (SNDK) shares hit a new 52-week high of $73.95, up $4.92 or 7.13%, “after the company wowed analysts with a slate of new gadgets including new USB drives and MP3 audio players,” The Associated Press reports. “JPMorgan analyst Paul Coster, who has an “Overweight” rating on the stock, said the company’s new MP3 players position it firmly as the No. 2 player in the MP3 market, and speculated that the new models could help the company steal market share, presumably from the likes of Apple Computer Inc., whose iPods have long dominated the space.”
Full article here.
SanDisk has about 29 percent of the worldwide flash player market, while Apple has about 49 percent, according to NPD Group. Apple holds approximately 75 percent market share of the overall worldwide player market (hard drive based units included) as of September 2005. Some company has to be the established distant number two to Apple. It’s looking more and more like SanDisk will be the company. Keep trying to make good players, SanDisk, and push Apple (originality would be appreciated, iPod knockoffs won’t cut it). That’ll give us even better iPods at even better prices! Competition is good.
Please note that SanDisk players are incompatible with, and will not (directly) play music, videos, or TV shows purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. iTunes Music Store holds approximately 80% of the legal digital online music market and is the #7 music retailer in the U.S. (Q3 05), up from #14 (Q3 04), ahead of Tower Records, Sam Goody, and Borders, according to NPD. (November 21, 2005)
Apple is due to report results of their holiday quarter on January 18th.
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SanDisk debuts 6GB flash-based Apple ‘iPod nano killer’ – January 05, 2006