“Thomas Weisel Partners comments on Apple after completing a round of 30 channel checks with Apple specialist resellers and Apple retail stores across the United States. Firm’s checks suggest seasonally soft quarter for Mac and iPod, which is not surprising given normal seasonal demand trends,” Notable Calls reports.
“TWP believes that, on a sequential basis, Mac units will likely decline in mid-single-digit area, but possibly be ahead of the Street assumptions on a revenue basis (they are at $5.39bn in total revenue versus Street at $5.17bn),” Notable Calls reports.
Notable Calls reports, “iPod nano still a dominant MP3 player, but checks suggest seasonal drop-off in demand compared with very strong December quarter: Again, not surprising and consistent with expectations of a 48% q/q decline in units. 4GB iPod nano remains the best-selling iPod, and Apple continues to outsell competition by 8:1 ratio.”
“Checks indicate limited interest in iTV [Apple TV]thus far. Firm does not view this product as a large opportunity, as they believe there are less than 6mn PVR-type devices sold in the marketplace annually at present,” Notable Calls reports.
Notable Calls reports, “Firm believes the growth opportunities continue to be strong for Apple, but that those opportunities appear to be well understood by the investment community and, thus, reflected in the current stock price. Maintains Mkt Weight rating.”
More details in the full article here.
Related articles:
Analyst: Mac sales growth continues to exceed rate of PC sales growth – March 30, 2007
NPD data shows Mac sales growing 5x market growth rate in February – March 29, 2007
PiperJaffray checks show Apple Mac sales likely to beat estimates this quarter – March 20, 2007
NPD: Mac sales grew 108% in January – March 01, 2007
Prudential ups Apple Inc. estimates on strong Mac sales, margins – February 21, 2007
RUMOR: Apple TV sales blowing away Apple’s internal expectations – January 25, 2007
These guys keep trying to find ways of being relevant. Chances are that they will be proven irrelevant again this quarter.
Seems like a very reasonable assessment. However, not quoted by MDN but in the article is this bit…
“I continue to be cautious on AAPL and still think it’s a short around current levels.”
It’s risky business to short AAPL. You never know what Jobs will pull out of his hat next.
Apple TV is over priced and the hard drive capacity is too low. They should have made it a 250GB hdd, full 3.5″ size to keep cost down and made it replaceable by the customer as well as turned on that USB port for external HDD storage capacity.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
STOP WHINING!
TV is not a pvr, therefore does not need to have a large hd. It’s for streaming video. You can place your photos on it however.
It will be interesting to see what the release of Adobe products does for Mac sales between now and the 15th.
Of course sales this quarter are softer than the last quarter. Christmas shopping happened last quarter, not this.
The author is a hit generating jerk. AAPL moves in direct relationship to management’s guidance. Management guided lower at the January conference call. The time to short AAPL was the morning after the conference call, not now.
My personal estimate for March quarter earnings is 74¢, with management guidance for the June quarter 70¢. That guidance represents a 25% increase over guidance given last January. A 25% increase in guidance is going to cause AAPL to boounce significantly the day after the April conference call.
Beware the analyst that posts contrarian “research notes”. They are trying to manipulate the stock lower so clients can jump in at a lower price.
I love my iPod, but I love my Creative a whole lot more. Sorry.
…Although I am definitely look forward to Apple TV. Either that or I just keep using Tivo or something. I have all my favorite shows and movies already stored and connected to my TV readily available for access though.
Check out this great BWeek article!
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070404_499334.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology
MDN should post it.
Tonight my wife and I caught up on BSG, Boston Legal and CSI. We sat in our kitchen and watched it on my Mac’s 17″ screen. While we did that I seriously contemplated if $299 was worth the ability to watch it on the comfy chairs in the living room with superior sound in comparison to the computer speakers (JBL Creature). Right now it’s not. There’s no iTunes content available outside the USA and my EyeTV only records in 640×480 which looks like crap on the big 27″ TV. So, I’m going to have to wait to see if more features are enabled with the release of Leopard to make it worth the price.
There is a point where a device becomes too minimalistic and therefore doesn’t have enough to convince the customer to purchase. Judging by the sales numbers, I suspect most prospective buyers feel the way I do.
Quite frankly i dont see a lot of consumers buying the TV because it doesnt play TV…. which despite Apples marketing etc won’t be known to them till they walk into the store and ask… they will then be disappointed and not buy it.
I realise it wouldve cost more for them to do, but would it have really been that hard to put a decent hard drive in and a HD tuner?
MCE is too complicated for the masses, if apple did it in true apple style they would have had a much bigger seller in my opinion.
The big news on Apple TV is not what what it is today. Currently it is a good product for the small target audience. What’s great about Apple TV is what it will be in the future.
The OS and UI are built, all Apple needs to do now is figure out what the everyone else wants Apple TV to be (for me, it’s the ability to record TV shows) and build it without alienating the movie studios Apple is currently trying to court.
Steve seems like he takes his time when we are impatiently waiting for something, but it will come eventually.
What were we talking about again?
MW – change
Apple may be slightly ahead of the curve with the Apple TV, but the whole market has to go this way. Broadcast television is already dead; they just haven’t buried it yet. When the content starts catching up, and customers start catching on, Apple will be right there in the middle of the great unfolding.
Tidbit just in
iTMS will have HD content shortly after Lepoard rolls around for Intel based Mac’s ONLY!
Disney content first of course.`
I think some of the reason for low sales is that a lot of people, me included, are waiting for Leopard to come out before purchases. Surely sales after Leopard will see a jump that will be higher than the similar quarter last year. If Apple gave the rebate for student purchases this upcoming fall and had a new widescreen ipod I would be sorely tempted to buy one. There reason sales are low I think, well part of the reason, is that people are delaying purchases for big news.
The TV, like the mini and iMac, are the products of, in my opinion, an exaggerated minimalist approach to design on the part of Apple.
They could offer more for less if they increased the size of these products.
By forcing themselves to use components designed for notebooks, they’re throwing away the advantages of desktops, i.e cheaper but more efficient components, together with more flexibility.
The Mac Pro is the exception of course, but it’s for the upper end of the market.
Apple should bring out a ‘standard’ computer, which could also, of course, be beautifully designed, and the size and price could lie comfortably between the mini and the Mac Pro.
Apple TV low sales – I even can not buy the thing in Poland. I have been banging their heads from March already and Apple retail store personnel act like complete morons without slightest idea about the item, although Polish Apple site says come and get it. It has been lasting like that for last month. Finally I have decided to fetch one out of Germany but because of Easter they also have days-off problem.
@ The Other Steve: “The big news on Apple TV is not what what it is today. Currently it is a good product for the small target audience. What’s great about Apple TV is what it will be in the future.
The OS and UI are built, all Apple needs to do now is figure out what the everyone else wants Apple TV to be (for me, it’s the ability to record TV shows) and build it without alienating the movie studios Apple is currently trying to court.”
The future is now, my friend. I agree with your take on what AppleTV should do, but disagree about why Apple didn’t just build it that way right off the bat, and whether it actually is a good product, or whether a “small target audience” for a device like this is worth going after.
Apple isn’t trying to figure out what people want – if they were still in that mode of thinking, the AppleTV wouldn’t have been offered at all yet. No, they’ve made a corporate decision to tie their video efforts exclusively to iTunes content, ignoring the whole world of content and capability that they could have allowed us to access with their device. As it stands, the AppleTV appeals to a market that consists essentially of Apple enthusiasts and tech geeks. And why Apple made it that way? I believe the desicion-makers iin Cupertino may have started taking their own press too seriously, and thought the majority of people were actually in those two catagories (especially the former).
As for alienating hollywood, let me tell you – that horse is out of the barn. It isnt b/c of anything Apple did to them – in fact, Apple has bent over backwards trying to court those f*ckwads. It’s all for naught, however, because what they hate about Apple is their success. Specifically, they’ve seen how record companies – without exception – eventually come around in some form to Apple’s desires on how to do things. As much as ‘corporations’ are all about making money, the people who run them do not percieve themselves as mere cogs in the machine. They are ego driven people. And none of the CEOs of the studios want to be Apple’s next bitches.
Jobs is still proceding from the delusion that he can do anything about that. He was a studio head not too long ago, so he probably has some sympathy. But in the end, technology is driving this argument between them – technology that allows HDTV & recording of content – and the studios are on the losing end of it. Jobs is hurting his TECHNOLOGY based company by not allowing it to build & sell a device that gives consumers what they’ve already demonstrated that they want (DVRs), which is to say what technology already provides. iPod did that – it gave the market what it already demonstrated it wanted (a DAR); it just gave them a better one. The runaway success that is iPod demonstrates the wisdom of the approach.
AppleTV is no iPod; it’s a kludge. Apple has ignored what technology and the market wants in favor of a ‘box & sales system’, designed to get the studios to ‘trust’ Apple enough to offer more content, in HD, on iTunes. Yet except for Disney, none of them will ever trust Apple. Ever. EMI just ‘caved’ on the one thing Hollywood believes in more than God (DRM), and you think they’re going to trust Jobs? Eventually they’ll offer more content (you can only bang your head against the wall for so long), but that could be years. Meanwhile, every other company out there is going to try to b/c THE brand for home entertainment – a huge market – and they won’t waste time trying to court an industry that doesn’t want to play with them. Apple, the one company in the best position to pull that off, is instead, stupidly, giving all their competitors a chance to do the same before them, simply by not bringing the hammer down ASAP.
“Steve seems like he takes his time when we are impatiently waiting for something, but it will come eventually. What were we talking about again? MW – change”
Good one. Aren’t these MagicWords freaky? Speaking of change, that reminds me of a famous quote:
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” -Mahatma Gandhi
As that applies here, there’s no time like the present for Apple to make AppleTV more than the expensive toy it is. They want to create change? All the technology and expertise they need is in place as we speak – has been for a couple of years in fact. So Apple needs to stop putzing around with esoteric ideas and misguided attempts to placate an industry that will never love them (talk about Stockholm Syndrome … sheesh!) and just get after it. Now.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool mad” style=”border:0;” />
Oh, and my own MagicWord is – no lie – “results”
In a slightly more restrained way I’m with Odyssey67 on this one. I’m accustomed to watching free television. In years gone by I recorded tv programs onto a vcr. Lately, (shock/horror) I’ve gotten sick and tired with Australian television stations jerking my wife and me around with delayed broadcasting of these programs. Sometimes we’ve had to wait years for programs; or the delaying of the broadcast for a sporting program or a non-rating period (because we have only five stations and two are broke or next to broke). Finally I’d had enough and I started downloading Xvid encoded tv shows. Breaching copyright? You bet! feeling guilty, no way!
Now if Apple had’ve made it easy to stream these programs (and I totally understand the legal issues involved) then I would’ve jumped at buying an AppleTV. What the product does for me now is, frankly nothing. There’s no incentive in it for me. Can it easily stream Xvids? No! Do I intend buying low quality programs when they eventually go on sale in this country at “The Store”. No bloody way.
So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing for the last year or so and I’ll eventually stop using the primary Panasonic vcr (probably in a few months) for the odd show we tape off cable or free to air and replace it with a digital dvd recorder. I’ll then probably use the the dvd recorder a lot more than the vcr (dead end technology).
I guess I’ll be using Toast a little while longer to re-encode the Xvid tv programs over to dvd VOBs.
The funny thing is that dvd players/recorded are region locked but in this country our courts see this as restriction on free trade so in effect we have no region locking. However the way the companies are releasing their programing they are actually “locking” the release dates to geographical regions. And that’s why millions of people download “illegal” tv shows. Are we criminals? I don’t care. I just want to see ep’s 16 and 17 of Jericho. And that’s where Xvid comes in.
Apple TV is a not just a product but a gambit to establish rational standards in a market riven by utter chaos. So the complaints that Apple TV doesn’t do this or that miss the point. The issues of DRM vs. no DRM, open vs. proprietary codecs, aspect ratios, bit rates and picture formats create a technological analog of the Augean Stables. If Apple were to support all existing varieties of this stinking mess, it would fail in this business along with all of the others. Apple has started small and is trying to affect standards to create a rational and outstanding architecture into which it can sell its products.
So for now we are stuck with a product that has outstanding performance with a simple user interaction model, but for a very limited set of capabilities. If Apple can make some headway in cleaning up the sh*t in the stables, by getting the best approaches accepted as standards, then it will be in a position to win big. But this is going to be a long struggle.
Anything compared to the Christmas quarter is going to look weak. iPods are the perfect gift, but right now everybody is planning their summer vacation.
Boy, folks are long-winded today.
Odyssey67 you are wrong. By your logic, Apple should have offered to record radio only for the iPod and we would all have been set. How dumb a proposition is that? To make this as easy as possible:
Cable/Satellite TV = Terrestrial Radio
CD = DVD
iPod = Apple TV
Apple is not trying to piggyback on the existing 40-50 year old TV distribution network and revenue model. That’s what Tivo and MCE did, and at least Tivo is a step in the right direction, but no one should fool themselves into thinking you are recording “free” shows, someone in your house is paying > $50 (in the US, I don’t know what the models look like outside the US), and sometimes a tremendous amount more.
Apple is trying to create an entirely new video content distribution system. The primary source of content is iTunes for now, but Apple TV has already defined a standard video format for people on the net to hit. Now anyone with an RSS feed that gets you to subscribe to it in iTunes has the distribution power that was locked up in broadcast TV channels. And the TV “success” model, Nielsen ratings, is horribly broken. Listen to Ron Moore’s latest Battlestar Galactica podcast “Frak Party”. He says up to 1/3 of their entire audience was from Tivo users (including me) and they can’t count that number in ratings cause advertisers won’t pay for Tivo users! With Apple TV, shows get paid direct and know exactly how many copies were sold, and if your buying, someone is watching.
it took Apple 3 years before the iPod hit critical mass because some couldn’t wrap their mind around it, I think Apple TV will be no different, sadly.
I would have got one if it worked on a 4×3 tv with comp. or s video
I will get one when I upgrade my tv ( 2 years from now >? )
It does work with an SDTV that has component, I had the Apple TV connected to one before I upgraded to an HDTV this past weekend. The only caveat is that Apple TV is formatting the video it plays to look good on a 16:9 display, so 4:3 content is a bit squished. You just have to have an SDTV that has a 16:9 setting to commensate for that. That’s why Apple says widescreen only, SDTVs with component inputs are a mixed bag in capability.