“An FBR Capital Markets analyst said Wednesday that Apple Inc.’s production cutbacks appear to be slackening, in a welcome sign for the company’s parts suppliers,” The Associtaed Press reports.
“Analyst Craig Berger told investors that ‘order patterns among component suppliers may begin to stabilize (somewhat) versus the past few months,'” AP reports.
“Berger said his checks indicate iPhone production for the fourth quarter should be down about 50 percent from the previous three months, compared with a previous estimate of 36 percent. But he said that figure for the first quarter of 2009 has been revised to a 25 percent decline from a 45 percent decline,” AP reports.
“He said iPod production is likely to grow in the fourth quarter by 30 percent, compared with a previous estimate of 44 percent. But his estimate for the first quarter of 2009–a 66 percent decline–remains unchanged from previous checks,” AP reports.
“Berger also kept his estimates for notebook and desktop computer production in the fourth quarter, which he sees declining by 9 percent and 17 percent respectively,” AP reports.
Full article here.
Same chip analyst, who said iPhone orders were down 50%, earlier. I would take his remarks with a grain of salt. He hasn’t shown himself to be too reliable
The title of this item should be, “Analyst less downbeat …”
The quality of forecasting by analysts, in the aggregate, has evidently not yet hit bottom. I anticipate that it will continue to decline through the end of 2009.