“One of the big computer news stories last quarter was the continued strength of Apple’s (AAPL) Mac sales even as the rest of the PC industry was shrinking,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“Of the 46 analysts we’ve heard from to date, all but a half dozen expect Apple to break the record 4.89 million set in its September quarter,” P.E.D. reports. “The average Mac unit sales estimate among the pros is 5.07 million; among the bloggers it’s 5.16 million. The consensus of all 46 analysts combined is a little over 5.15 million, representing nearly 25% growth from the same quarter last year.”
P.E.D. reports, “We’ll find out who was closest to the mark next Tuesday at about 4:30 p.m. EST, when the quarterly results hit.”
Read more in the full article here.
Five million a quarter? I remember a few years ago freaking out that they were selling 5 million A YEAR. Apple, steamroller is thy name.
And rolling steaming piles of money to the bank is thy game.
I can remember the dark days when several analysts were saying that in order for Apple to survive it had to sell at least 4 million Macs a YEAR. (It wasn’t doing even that back then.) Now they’re doing significantly more than that a QUARTER.
How times have changed.
However….
While I certainly hope that Apple has sold well over 5 million in one quarter, I’m skeptical. A 25% increase year over year while the rest of the industry, on average, suffered a greater than 8% LOSS in sales is almost too fantastic to be believed.
I certainly hope it is true, but this could easily be the same situation as last quarter’s report. Analysts got tired of being beaten by Apple’s actual results so they predicted *stupid* numbers that they knew Apple would be *very* unlikely to beat. This could easily be the case again.
Wow, it wasn’t that long ago that Apple didn’t even sell a million Macs in a quarter, and the notion that it ever would sell a million Macs in a single quater was considered laughable. My how times have changed… Glad I bought lots of AAPL back then!
… 200 shares for my wife. Those shares dropped at the end of last week and she wanted me to sell, get back in when it went back up. We were going away for the weekend and I said I’d consider selling Monday. Today she saw the higher price and said “sell while it’s high”. I’ve been pointing to the articles explaining why it should go higher – much higher – over the next year or two.
She’s NOT a “trader”.
Good thing, too.I’m ready for the market to retreat, which I fully expect to see – SEVERAL times over the next couple of years. Retreat, then recover. And her shares will grow in the process.
Your wife wanted you to sell low and buy high? Divorce her now. Find a bimbo that’ll waste your money in more entertaining ways.
Looks like they deserve each other
I just ordered a 2.4 GHZ 15″ MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM, 750 GB HDD @ 7,200 RPM about a half hour ago!
It will be in my anxious little fingers tomorrow!
I ordered it with Parallels 7 and Windows 7 Professional pre-installed.
I’ve never had a computer running Windows before.
I need it for work, and I figure the occasional game too perhaps.
I won’t be using Windows to access the net, but is there anything I should do to protect it, other than perhaps a cloned copy of the Windows partition?
Your name says it all. 😉
Just kidding, as I too have to run Windows for one stupid program for less than 5 minutes per day. I boot in and out (via Bootcamp) as fast as I can. Now if I can just get the programmers to …… Nah, not a chance!
Got it today.
Can’t wait to get home and set it up.