“Needham & Co.’s Charlie Wolf joins the discussion among analysts over just what the relationship is between Apple‘s Mac computer sales and the iPad,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“Wolf thinks that overall, the iPad is having a beneficial ‘halo effect,’ pulling in Mac buyers who might not have otherwise considered Macs,” Ray reports. “However, he also goes into some discussion at length of the possible cannibalization of Macs… Wolf’s note is similar in some regards to a note put out yesterday by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, who wrote that there is probably some cannibalization, but it may not be a bad thing:”
As consumers, in some cases, shift or augment their traditional PC setup to include tablet devices, some cannibalization of the Mac from the iPad is unavoidable. However, we believe Apple maintaining its majority (60% plus) market share in the ultimately larger tablet market is more important than meaningfully increasing single digit market share in the PC space, despite 2.5x higher ASPs for PCs (Macs vs iPads). Combined iPad and Mac sales are expected to be $62B today, and assuming aggressive cannibalization of the Mac, those combined segments should nearly double to $119B in 2015. – Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster
Read more in the full article here.