“The Apple (AAPL) doomsayers had a field day last week when independent research company NPD announced that sales of Mac computers were down by 6 percent in January in U.S. stores. Based on that decline, Apple’s market share dropped to 13.7 percent from 16.4 percent. A second study, by forecasting company ChangeWave Alliance, also showed an incremental weakening of Apple sales, particularly in the desktop segment,” Alex Salkever writes for Seeking Alpha.
MacDailyNews Note: Alex Salkever is the director of research at Piqqem.com, a wisdom of crowds stock picking tool that leverages the Internet to aggregate crowd sentinment for improved stock predictions. He was formerly technology editor at BusinessWeek.com.
Salkever writes, “We think these changes are borderline irrelevant. Apple continues to be the highest-rated stock in the “Piqqem Sentiment Index” and for good reason. Here’s why last week’s bad news and the subsequent price decline into the low $90s is actually a pricing anomaly pending a rebound into the low $100s as the news shakes out.”
Salkever’s 6 Simple Reasons Why Betting Against Apple Now Is a Mistake:
1. January is sequentially a very weak month for PC sales in general
2. MacWorld 2009 had very few exciting product announcements
3. Focusing primarily on Mac computer slowdown underplays importance of the iPhone
4. The Coming Kindle Killer and Mac Netbooks
5. Overstating the Importance of Steve Jobs
6. The Balance Sheet: “Apple is sitting on $25.6 billion in cash, or roughly $28 cash per share.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some good reasons, some specious (“Mac Netbooks?” “Kindle Killer?”), and one that’s a few billion off: Apple has over $28 billion as of the last financial results conference call (Q109, January 21, 2009). To =anyone outside of the Washington D.C. Beltway, $2.4+ billion is a significant amount of cash.
