“Can Apple regain its status as a Wall Street darling?” Jon Fortt asks for Fortune.
“So far 2008 has not been kind to the technology trendsetter. With U.S. iPod sales slowing and iPhone hype fading, investors have been seized by worries that the crew in Cupertino isn’t much of a growth story anymore. The stock has fallen 40 percent from its recent highs, losing some $50 billion in market value –and it isn’t clear what could turn things around,” Fortt reports.
“It does seem certain that relief won’t come from Apple’s newest products. The super-slim but pricey MacBook Air laptop that CEO Steve Jobs unveiled in January has met with mixed reviews, and won’t provide enough of a boost to make up for the iPod slowdown. And Apple TV, the second incarnation of Apple’s failed attempt to bring digital downloads to the television, doesn’t seem to be attracting an iPod-like following either; on Amazon, it’s about as popular as a niche backup hard drive,” Fortt reports.
Forrt writes, “So where will Apple go for a sales boost to lift its stock? Perhaps overseas.”
Full article here.
MacBook Air was never meant to “make up” for any so-called “iPod slowdown.” It’s simply a certain type of notebook for a certain type of user. Apple has other notebooks designed to cover the needs of users not addressed by MacBook Air. “iPhone hype fading” = Pointless filler. As for the so-called “iPod slowdown,” we prefer to deal in facts instead of meaningless bullshit, so please see iPod quarterly unit sales below (organized by quarter which clearly illustrates seasonality and continuous, uninterrupted growth, among other things). We won’t even get into how Apple is in the process of establishing iPod as a new mobile platform (iPod touch) and reaping higher margins along the way. The jury’s still out on Apple TV, which is currently earning excellent reviews; it usually takes quite some time for new products/concepts to seep into the consciousness of the general consumer.
iPod unit sales:
Q1:
• 2008 (ended 12/29/07): 22.121 million iPods
• 2007 (ended 12/30/06): 21.066 million iPods
• 2006 (ended 12/31/05): 14.043 million iPods
• 2005 (ended 12/25/04): 04.580 million iPods
• 2004 (ended 12/27/03): 733,000 iPods
Q2:
• 2007 (ended 03/07/07): 10.549 million iPods
• 2006 (ended 04/01/06): 08.526 million iPods
• 2005 (ended 03/26/05): 05.311 million iPods
• 2004 (ended 03/27/04): 807,000 iPods
Q3:
• 2007 (ended 06/30/07): 09.815 million iPods
• 2006 (ended 07/01/06): 08.111 million iPods
• 2005 (ended 07/13/05): 06.155 million iPods
• 2004 (ended 06/26/04): 860,000 iPods
Q4:
• 2007 (ended 09/29/07): 10.200 million iPods
• 2006 (ended 09/30/06): 08.729 million iPods
• 2005 (ended 10/11/05): 06.451 million iPods
• 2004 (ended 09/25/04): 02.016 million iPods
If the MacBook Air had any purpose besides entering the ultra portable market, it was to demonstrate that Apple’s design team is still on the cutting edge.
Not even Apple may know what the next big thing is, but when they find out, their design team will be ready to blow us all away.
How can Apple regain its status as Wall Street darling?
By ignoring Wall Street and launching great product, worldwide. Lots of former Wall Street darling, or Fortune Magazine poster boys, or other people favorites, are now bankrupt.
Pleasing Wall Street is the same as deal with Satan.
Apple doesn’t design products to please Wall Street, it designs products for users to use. That’s why we don’t see BS concepts that never materialize and we see products that are already in production.
” MacBook Air was never meant to “make up” for any so-called “iPod slowdown.” “
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It’s not a “so-called” slowdown, it is very real.. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Apple is not a one-trick pony. They have three other product lines (Macs, iPhones and Apple TV) that are all showing signs of massive growth.. Particularly Macs.
As far as I can remember Apple has never been the darling of Wall Street.
And, I don’t understand why Apple has to be the one in the technology field that has to WOW everyone every 6 months to survive. Meanwhile every other tech company coasts along with the most mediocre products they can produce.
No other company has done any WOWing in decades, yet Apple appears to need to do it for Wall Street to be credible. Microsoft? The “wow” there is that they are still making so much money.
It’s as if Steve Jobs were to come out – Walk on Water – and then hear “That’s awesome – now what can you do?”
There is no recession overseas, and half of Apples revenue comes from abroad.
How can Apple regain its status as Wall Street darling?
Do they need to?
“And Apple TV, the second incarnation of Apple’s failed attempt to bring digital downloads to the television,”
Who the hell is this hack?
I’m not sure that AAPL’s “fall” in stock value has anything to do w/ what the Apple is or isn’t doing–it appears that this is market driven. The market is getting it’s ass kicked, so the obvious target for profit taking is the big earners..Apple happened to be the big target this time..I tend to believe AAPL will climb back–the Co’s solvent and practically debt-free and continues to churn out interesting & popular products..
I’m unloading my apple stock as we speak. Apple is going down the drain.
Hey Cliff..can i have it? If you haven’t jumped off the cliff yet?
smart to sell low. invest with emotion and sell now. what a stupid statement you made. smart, value oriented investors should be accumulating Apple at these levels.
If you plot your data MDN (as units sold on Y-axis vs Years on X-axis) you will see that there is indeed a marked slowdown in the rate of increase in units sold. The absolute number of units per quarter is higher but the percentage increase has markedly declined. I suspect this partly explains the Wall Street reaction. They are interested in percentage growth, not just absolute sales. Not sufficient to explain the marked over-reaction, however.
I agree….Wall Street I know it matters but it doesn’t matter that much to me. I owned Apple Stock a few years ago and sold it to buy by house. Apple was very very good to me. Apple continues to produce cutting edge products and with almost 20 billion in the bank I am not sure they care much about Wall Street.
Comment from: jjjj
How can Apple regain its status as Wall Street darling?
Do they need to?
I still think the ATV would do better with an ultra-tech individual design. It’s no sexier than a hard drive at the moment.
MDN Take: […] As for the so-called “iPod slowdown,” we prefer to deal in facts instead of meaningless bullshit, so please see iPod quarterly unit sales below (organized by quarter which clearly illustrates seasonality and continuous, uninterrupted growth, among other things). […]
Hmmm … Jon Fortt was talking about U.S. iPod sales, not world wide. Which was kind of the whole idea, the original headline for Fortt’s article is “Overseas sales could revive Apple.”
So, MDN, instead of meaningless bullshit, please show the facts: U.S. iPod quarterly sales to clearly illustrate continuous, uninterrupted growth in the U.S.
I haven’t seen the U.S numbers, only reference I know is Apple CFO Oppenheimer’s statement in 2007 Q4 Earnings conference call “In the U.S. where iPod unit sales were flat year-over-year, …”
So MDN, out with the bullshit, in with the facts!
to answer the question. Apple needs to kill the street with Mac sales.
FEAR. There are an awful lot of people and businesses who are terrified at what Apple is achieving – and they are paying big bucks to people to talk up an Apple slowdown.
Just look at the facts. Apple has sewn up the online music business. Completely. It has sewn up the mobile music/video playing devices.
It is on the cusp of sewing up the video rental and online video content sales market.
It has the worlds best operating computer operating system and if and when it chooses it will make huge inroads very rapidly in to the corporate market.
If I were trying to compete, I suspect I would also do what I could to slow Apple and give myself a breather to try and come up with something to compete.
For those of us that have already seen this, the share price fall is the most ridiculous gift..
Read the Roughly Drafted blog of 2/22/08, The iPod Crisis Myth. One of his points is:
Had Apple sustained 527% growth over the last three years, it would have had to sell:
10.5 million ipods in Q1 2005
55.5 million ipods in Q1 2006
292.7 million ipods in Q1 2007
Next winter, Apple would have to sell 1.55 billion iPods in 3 months of winter.
That’s BILLION. Looking only at the percentage increase is asinine.
I’m a big fan of Apple, but its because of the products. All this stock performance based love/hate is really ridiculous to me.
iPod Touch + WiMax is the future and there will be many touch based appliances for the car and home
There should be laws, or at least checks and controls to prevent that the stock market reacts as it has w.r.t. AAPL stock.
What we have seen here are the elements for catastrophic collapse of the stock market, based on… well… nothing, just self-sustaining rumors. Nothing to do with the real wellness of the companies.
The industry should do something about this erratic kind of behavior of the stock market, because it can do a lot of harm, not just to Apple.
“That’s BILLION. Looking only at the percentage increase is asinine.”
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No, it isn’t. That’s how the stock market works..
While Apple was growing iPod sales at 500%, the stock was doing the same.
When growth slows and levels so does the stock. True, aapl has been hit unusually hard, but luckily, they have other growth drivers which will help it rise again.
The Street just sees AAPL as another stock. And as such, when big investors don’t see an opportunity for aggressive growth, they look elsewhere. It’s a feast-or-famine effect.
That said, there’s nothing WRONG with Apple, they’ve just plateaued for now. They’re precisely where one needs to be to survive a recession.
Expect new ventures (i.e. return of the eMate) when the economic clouds lift a little.
If anything, start paying some dividend out of the enormous cash pile they have! That what SHARE holding mean. Give us a share.
Otherwise, just keep making profit and marketshare where others are not, which they will in the next 3 quarters.
They are to really quit writing these B.S. articles.
Its impossible for any company to constantly innovate on the level of an iphone.
Apple needs to now focus on managing what they got and continue to position themselves for the future. Apple TV, Frontrow, digital media is where their focus is right now and will prove to be a huge strategic move in the future.
OS X is Top of the line consumer OS, ZFS is in the works! Time
capsule is a great addition to complete the Time Machine feature.
Apple has many many smaller scale innovations now that add up to a lot. They have just been released from the starting gate and will position Apple to be a huge player in digital media and consumer space.
Right now they need to continue to focus on incremental improvements to existing product lines…. like adding the iphone SDK, Getting move movies on iTunes rental, positioning AppleTV, flushing out remaining bugs out of Leopard, etc.
Apple has done a great job, and its just getting better!