“A very interesting statistic came out of Apple Computer’s earnings call on Apr. 19. And it wasn’t just that sales were up by more than $1 billion, that profit rose 41%, or that in the first half of fiscal 2006, Apple generated more than $10 billion in revenue,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek. “No. To me, the most compelling figure nestled among comments by CFO Peter Oppenheimer was that 50% of people buying Macs in Apple retail stores are classified as ‘new to Mac,’ meaning they have not owned a Mac before, and to at least some sizable extent may be switching over from Windows. This is going to become increasingly important for Apple in the next few quarters, particularly in the latter half of this year and into 2007.”
“The retail division was responsible for 154,000 Mac sales in the quarter, which means that if the ‘new to Mac’ stat is accurate (and for the sake of healthy skepticism, I would really like to know how Apple counts these people), some 77,000 people bought their first Macs in the most recent quarter. Allow me to extrapolate a little further, based on the retail results of other recent quarters. Let’s say Mac retail sales are flat to slightly higher each quarter this year from last year. And if the 50% “new-to-Mac” statistic holds steady, then we could see somewhere in the ballpark of 400,000 to a half-million new Mac owners this year in the Apple retail segment alone,” Hesseldahl writes. “And surely that can’t account for all of the consumers who count as ‘new to the Mac.’ Analyst Charles Wolf of Needham and Co. in New York late last year forecasted that there could be something on the order of 1.3 million people ‘switching’ from Windows to Mac this year. That number may be a little low.”
“Apple’s recent addition of Boot Camp — provided its Beta-testing period is successful and there are no significant problems — will only help close the deal with other potential switchers,” Hesseldahl writes. “If there are any lingering doubts in the minds of many using Windows now who are intrigued by the Mac, Boot Camp will go a long way toward erasing them. This could cause an interesting groundswell of new Mac buyers as Apple continues to fill out its Intel-based product lineup. Still in the pipeline is an Intel-based consumer-grade notebook to succeed the current iBook model, and an Intel-based successor to the professional-grade PowerMac G5… This all adds up to the potential for a pretty healthy year in Mac sales — to switchers and Mac devotees alike.”
More in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Quick, everybody watch out! That point is tipping and it’s aimed right at us!
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple Q2 2006 Conference Call notes – April 19, 2006
Apple reports Q2 2006 earnings: $4.36 billion revenue, $0.47 earnings per share – April 19, 2006
Cowen & Co survey shows strong Apple Mac sales prospects, Boot Camp impact ‘broadly positive’ – April 18, 2006
It will be a happy day when Apple has a hard time keeping supply and demand in check without any supplier constraints.
@Andrew “Now if you want to see something, install the Developers Tools and run Big Top. In the list on the left is a Outgoing Packet count, set the recording to “unlimited” and let that run all night.
You should see some periodic connections about 10 packets or so, most likely the network timer (contacts Apple obviously). But if you see anymore than that, with no programs running, your most likely OWNED.”
I’m not sure what type/make of broadband modem you’re using, but mine has a “HOLD” button on it. When you toggle it, it will keep your connection but not allow any traffic in either direction. Hit it again – and you’re back on. That’s not to say info isn’t going out when I am on (since Tiger’s firewall does not monitor outgoing traffic), but it’s nice to have that button and stop all traffic whenever I want. Little Snitch is still a must have in my book – I like to know who’s calling out on my pay-phone.
@neomonkey “Little Snitch has been very informative for me. Even Software Update tries to send information about the versions of Apple software you have. Macsurfer tries to initiate a connection to Paypal on Port 443. And others…
The disturbing part is finding out what can be done without your knowledge, not that there’s anything nefarious going on now, but it could.”
Not quite sure how you meant that, but Software Update would logically have to send that info in order to find out if there is indeed an update available. I would suspect that since Macsurfer has a PayPal donate option, that the “donate buton” is connecting to PayPal. I agree though – it can be disconcerting to find programs that phone home. I recently bought an app (which shall remain nameless) that had no option to turn off automatic updates. There was no option for updates at all. Still, it attempted to connect to the developers site ON EVERY DAMN LAUNCH! So, I called the developers (RESPECTED small internet-based utility developer) and asked them what was up. They told me it checks for updates on every launch. BYE BYE APP!