“One of the big alleged disappointments of Apple’s otherwise stellar fiscal first quarter results was the company’s Mac shipments,” Larry Dignan blogs for ZDNet. “The issue: Apple shipped 1.6 million Macs in the quarter and that was short of the 1.75 million analysts were expecting. Of course, Apple’s outlook was weaker-than-expected, but many Wall Streeters were expecting that guidance anyway. That leaves Mac sales as a big reason why Apple shares are getting shellacked today.”
“Now it’s time for perspective. Those Mac sales were up 28 percent from a year ago and flat quarter over quarter. In a PC industry that’s showing growth of about 3 percent that’s pretty impressive,” Dignan writes.
Dignan reports, “‘Apple has achieved an approximate 2-5 million increase in the number of active Mac OS X users-and this while increasing blended average shipment ASPs on its CPU category by almost 10 percent versus last year,’ said ThinkEquity Partners analyst Jonathan Hoopes. That’s a significant point. Meanwhile, Hoopes also notes that what Apple didn’t say at Macworld–it didn’t talk tablet PCs, didn’t showcase new OS X features and stayed clear of any next-gen Mac notebook and PC designs. The hint: These things will come later this year to drive Mac sales. ‘We expect the next few months to contain a few special events where new software, services, and hardware will be announced,’ said Hoopes.”
Dignan reports, “On the conference call last night (see SeekingAlpha transcript), Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook was asked…about a quarter to quarter Mac sale decline.”
His answer:
We have an extremely strong educational business in the Q4 period that includes substantial institutional business, and that institutional business corrects significantly as we get into Q1. The sequential decline that we saw is something that is very seasonal in nature. Frankly, we were very happy to overall have the same number of total Macs that we had in Q4, because we expected that given the high level of institutional sales, including two very large one-to-ones that total 50,000 units, we had predicted the Mac to be down from Q4, and it is not.
Dignan writes, “Bottom line: Put those Mac sales in context before getting panicky.”
More in the full article here.
Sheesh! We expected the seasonal sequential decline in Mac sales so implicitly, that the panicky reaction by some to Q1 vs. Q4 Mac unit sales took us totally by surprise. That’s what we get for actually listening to Apple’s conference call and taking notes.
Thanks to Dignan for spelling it out so clearly. Some people are looking for any Apple weakness; if they can’t find anything, they seem to just make something up.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s recent earnings and unit sales information:
2004:
• Q1 (ended 12/27/03): revenue of $2.006 billion, net quarterly profit of $63 million, 829,000 Macs, 733,000 iPods
• Q2 (ended 03/27/04): revenue of $1.909 billion, net quarterly profit of $14 million, 749,000 Macs, 807,000 iPods
• Q3 (ended 06/26/04): revenue of $2.014 billion, net quarterly profit of $61 million, 876,000 Macs, 860,000 iPods
• Q4 (ended 09/25/04): revenue of $2.350 billion, net quarterly profit of $106 million, 836,000 Macs, 02.016 million iPods
2005:
• Q1 (ended 12/25/04): revenue of $3.49 billion, net quarterly profit of $295 million, 1.046 million Macs, 04.580 million iPods
• Q2 (ended 03/26/05): revenue of $3.24 billion, net quarterly profit of $290 million, 1.070 million Macs, 05.311 million iPods
• Q3 (ended 07/13/05): revenue of $3.52 billion, net quarterly profit of $320 million, 1.182 million Macs, 06.155 million iPods
• Q4 (ended 10/11/05): revenue of $3.68 billion, net quarterly profit of $430 million, 1.236 million Macs, 06.451 million iPods
2006:
• Q1 (ended 12/31/05): revenue of $5.75 billion, net quarterly profit of $565 million, 1.254 million Macs, 14.043 million iPods
• Q2 (ended 04/01/06): revenue of $4.36 billion, net quarterly profit of $410 million, 1.112 million Macs, 08.526 million iPods
• Q3 (ended 07/01/06): revenue of $4.37 billion, net quarterly profit of $472 million, 1.327 million Macs, 08.111 million iPods
• Q4 (ended 09/30/06): revenue of $4.84 billion, net quarterly profit of $546 million, 1.610 million Macs, 08.729 million iPods
2007:
• Q1 (ended 12/30/06): revenue of $7.10 billion, net quarterly profit of $1 billion, 1.606 million Macs, 21.066 million iPods
As for upcoming Apple special events, we hear such chatter in the rumor mill currently; we’ll let you know when Apple makes something official.
Related articles:
Gartner: Apple’s U.S. Mac shipments up 30.6% year over year – January 18, 2007
IDC: Apple’s worldwide and U.S. Mac shipments were each up roughly 30% year over year – January 18, 2007
Analyst: Apple’s holiday-quarter Mac sales were solid – January 18, 2007
Apple smashes Street, posts revenue of $7.1 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1 billion – January 17, 2007
Net Applications: Apple’s Mac market share continues rise, now at 5.39%, up 31% year-over-year – December 01, 2006
Apple’s Mac market share surges, up 35-percent year-over-year as growth accelerates – November 01, 2006
Analyst: Apple has ‘real shot at dramatically expanding Macintosh market share’ – October 31, 2006
Analyst: Apple Mac gains market share, the reason why is significant – October 26, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 5.8% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 6.1% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
I think it’s too soon to read much from the current numbers. Let’ see what next quarter numbers bring.
The concept of “word,” as in: “a word to the wise,” or “The word of God,” always implies more than one word. In fact, it may incompass thousands of words, e.g, a philosophical system.
Mac n’ Cheese was correct.
Get off his case.
You know there is a good argument that the obsession with quarterly figures is not so clever.
If Apple announced annual figures all these ridiculous micro-analyses would go by the board, and we’d need fewer analysts too…
But it’s not going to happen so we have to live with it. APPL is a buying opportunity at sub-90 that’s for sure.
Apple is too slow on the computer front.
Been too distracted lately.
Needs new product, OS, software…probably March when it is all revealed.
I’m with you on that one, RK. I had no issue with Mac n’Cheese’ use of the word ‘word’. I am just dismayed that when a mistake or typo about his spelling of AAPL was pointed out by me as the fourth post in this thread, he obviously corrected his spelling and deleted my post. It’s not a huge deal, but it is dishonest on the part of this site to alter posts that are not offensive without the consent of the poster. I’m sure MacDailyNews reserves that right, but it is still very ‘1984’, and not in the good Mac ad kind of way.
I still have a screen grab of the original posts before Mac n’ Cheese altered them, if anyone is interested.
And along the lines of this thread, Go AAPL!
I know 3 people waiting to buy a Mac, including myself. They were waiting for, at the very least, iLife ’07 to be included and /or Leopard to ship installed and already included in the new purchase price of the new computer.
We’re so close to those 2 important things being included in the price, that if people aren’t desperate, they’ll wait! That’s logical and financially prudent. With Macs not being cheap, any couple hundred you can save is worth the wait!
So if you multiply that mentality thoroughout the country or world, you can see why Mac sales have stalled a bit.
Mac n’ Cheese wrote “One word” not “The word”.
“One word: ThunderCougarFalconBird.”
I haven’t heard anyone point this out, but it looks like Apple’s Q1 profit was nearly DOUBLE what it has ever been in any quarter in Apple’s recent history. Maybe ever. Wow!
“You know there is a good argument that the obsession with quarterly figures is not so clever. “
There’s another argument which says when you loose significant market share in the US market in a quarter, you should be concerned.
Apple’s US market share has declined by about 20% quarter to quarter. Is MDN printing that statistic? No, they pick the most optimistic sounding one.