“In this back-to-school season, college kids are buying Macs in numbers never seen before. A recent survey by Student Monitor, a New Jersey outfit that tracks the buying habits of college students, found that 13% of all undergrads expect to buy a new notebook this fall. Of those, 43% say they plan to get a MacBook or MacBook Pro, nearly double those who said they expected to get a Dell notebook, and seven times as many as those who plan to buy from HP, says Eric Weil, the firm’s managing partner. While students prefer Dell for desktop computers, that’s small consolation: Students favor notebooks over desktops by a factor of nearly 5 to 1,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for BusinessWeek.
“Back-to-school time has always been important for Apple. In 2007 the company sold nearly 2.2 million Macs in its fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, up 34% from the year-earlier period. Those computers brought in $3.1 billion during the 2007 quarter, half of all the company’s revenue,” Hesseldahl reports. “Another blowout quarter is in the offing: Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray (PJC) wrote in a research note on Aug. 25 that the latest numbers from market researcher NPD suggest Apple could sell as many as 2.9 million Macs this quarter. That would mean a surge of 34% from the same quarter a year ago. On the iPod and iPhone front, NPD data, Munster says, suggest sales in the ballpark of 11 million and 4 million units, respectively. Add it all up and you have the makings of a quarter where Apple could beat Wall Street consensus numbers by 8¢, and report earnings per share as high as $1.19.”
“Moreover, Apple has of late been defying trends in the computer industry. It has been winning share of the personal computer market, reaching 8.5% in the U.S. behind Dell and HP, according to the most recent Gartner (IT) report. In the second quarter, it saw its year-on-year growth rate in unit shipments hit 38%. That’s three times the rate of growth at Dell, seven times faster than HP, and nine times faster than the PC industry as a whole,” Hesseldahl reports.
Hesseldahl reports, “Students want to buy products that are cool, and the perception about Windows at the moment is anything but. The iPod tends to entice people from Windows over to the Mac, and the iPhone will only add to that trend.”
Much more, including a bet that we guarantee (iCal us) that Hesseldahl will win, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Matti” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Windows. It is your father’s OS.