Apple’s iPod, with Q4 07 sales of 10.2 million units, “was taking a breather before the current fiscal first quarter, when iPod sales traditionally dominate due to end-of-the year holiday shopping,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
MacDailyNews Note: iPod sales achieved 17% growth over the year-ago quarter’s 8.729 million iPod units. In Q1 06, Apple sold 21.066 million iPods.
Crum continues, “‘Typically, the September quarter is a back-to-school quarter driven by Macs, while the December quarter is a consumer quarter driven by iPods,’ said Shaw Wu of American Technology Research. Wu holds a buy rating and $210 price target on Apple’s stock.”
“Wu also estimates that Apple will post iPod sales of 24 million units during the December quarter, and that forecast is only slightly less than the approximately 25 million iPod average forecast from analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Such a figure would represent a 19% increase over the 21 million iPods Apple sold in its first quarter a year ago,” Crum reports.
“That sentiment was echoed by analysts such as Ingrid Ebeling, of JMP Securities. According to Ebeling, the new iPod touch — which is basically an iPhone without the cellphone capability — is having a strong impact on iPod sales,” Crum reports. “Ebeling estimates that the final quarter of the year could account for as much as 45% of iPod sales for all of 2007 and that Apple could sell 29 million iPods by the end of December.”
Crum reports, “Keith Bachman, of BMO Securities, [believes] that September’s iPod figures don’t represent the traditional iPod sales rate, and that his 24 million forecast ‘is a very achievable estimate.'”
Full article here.