“Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today issued a new research report sharing data from research firm NPD covering Apple’s U.S. Mac sales for the January-February timeframe, revealing that Apple’s sales are currently up 14% year-over-year,” Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors. “The performance is down somewhat from the 31% growth seen for January alone, but remains very solid as Apple’s iMac shortages appear to have eased.”
“Despite the strong performance, Munster is maintaining his estimate of an overall 5% decline in worldwide Mac sales for the quarter, even though Apple’s worldwide numbers have frequently outperformed the U.S. data gathered by NPD,” Slivka reports.
Read more in the full article here.
So, for how long is Apple stock and iMac sales going to be doubted because of last quarters major screwup from the iMac redesign with only about 3 weeks of deliveries? Tim Cook’s inventory scheduling magic really burned and trashed those sales numbers. Do you think reality next quarter Mac sales will make these analysts believers again or do they think they are looking at Dell and HP’s PC sales numbers?
“Think Different” this is Apple!
Facts are facts. As you say, Tim Cook really screwed up the iMac deliveries. This is March. They’re just now beginning to catch up. That’s not good. It isn’t because of overwhelming demand rather lack of production. Apple didn’t do it on purpose but it is reality. Don’t blame Wall Street for Apple’s inability to deliver a new product. The supply of existing iMacs dried up before the new iMac was ready for delivery. That killed sales and revenue for Macs for the Q1. This is Q2 and it’s almost finished. Think how good sales could be if they had enough iMacs available. Q2 Mac sales will probably not be as outstanding as they should be. That’s not the fault of journalists who cover the stock market either. Next quarter (Q3) should be better. More in the line of what it should be. Dell and Hewlett-Packard have no problem delivering all the PCs they can sell. However demand is not very high for them. But they don’t build iMacs, so it’s not their fault either. This is all squarely on the shoulders of Apple. Apple failed miserably this time. Hopefully they’ll do better with product supplies in the future. They’d better.
I hold professional analysts to a standard that includes recognizing one-time hiccups for what they are, and not extrapolating the next 10 years from them. A whole product line was redesigned. Stuff happens. Don’t forget that Apple as an organization is still feeling the effects of the loss of SJ. That was a major disruption to many things that were in the pipeline at the time (iPhone5, iMac, etc). I’ll give them a mulligan on this, just as anybody who’s paying attention should. But that’s the problem. Few analysts are paying attention to the big picture at Apple. They’re all breathlessly chasing the latest rumor, hoping against hope that they can be the one to see Apple’s demise before anyone else does.
Well, Apple gives them so little they must scrape up data somehow, even if that means stringing together conjectures and passing it off as logic. It also means they can ill afford to ignore any rumour whatsoever, even blatant tommyrot. Those ingredients are less than inspiring coming from MBAs, but they are not paid to wait patiently for reliable data, but to put something together using what little they have, plausible or not. Reputation? Not really a problem when everyone else is in the dark, too. You’re right about their neglecting the big picture, though. Curious, since by now Apple is famous for long product development cycles and other conspicuous signs of a long-range strategy operating. For me the most conspicuous is the apparent passivity of Apple’s CEO. Yes, he sent Phil Schiller out there to mollify a few anxious supporters, but he’s not losing sleep himself. To me that means he has a grenade in his pocket, maybe three.
Either Tim Cook has aces wired in this game of poker, or he doesn’t have a clue. Those are the only two logical reasons for adopting a passive, waiting strategy. Which do you think is the more likely alternative? I think he’s waiting for the competition to go all in before he flips over his hole cards.
Hopefully he has better things to do than spending all day on the blogosphere reading about Apple’s demise. If I were a CEO, I wouldn’t waste my time reading garbage if I knew what my company was really doing. As a shareholder, I’m just looking for shreds of hope of some good news but I mostly keep running into bad news about Apple. I figure any company can mess up in a transition. What really matters is how well you can recover and get back to normalcy. It’s just no good when you’ve got the news media looking for every little mis-step and then trying to blow it out of proportion.
I think Apple isn’t very concerned about what the competition is doing if it has a roadmap to follow. It’s true that roadmaps have been followed and don’t work out if the competition comes out with something radical. Maybe some companies work out multiple roadmaps although that could be expensive. I can only imagine the misfortune of companies that had netbook roadmaps nicely laid out for several years and it took them to a dead end street.
Zeke, I agree only two possibilities: cool customer, or dolt. (A third is both, but TC exhibits no other behaviors symptomatic of schizophrenia.)
“It isn’t because of overwhelming demand rather lack of production.”
Would you please cite your source for the above sentence? Do you work in Apple order processing? No? You really don’t know squat right? I thought so.
Jeez! Apple itself stated that they had failed to have the new iMacs ready for orders. What part of that don’t you understand? Why are you so defensive? Do you work at Apple? No, we know better than that. You just bitch and moan about anything that is said about Apple that doesn’t suit your needs. Sorry, just the facts ma’am.
That’s a drag without the net
So this idiot has decided that the entire quarter would give a year over year decline of 5% even though the first two months of the quarter averaged a 14% growth year over year. Does he really believe that the month of March, by itself will have a 43% year over year decline, which is what it will take for the entire quarter to be down 5%? Even in the dark days, if I recall correctly, Macs never suffered a 43% year over year decline for any one month! This guy is a pure idiot pulling numbers from places none of us want to contemplate!
To be fair, Shadowself, the YoY growth numbers are for U.S. Mac sales in Jan-Feb and Munster’s predicted YoY decline is for quarterly worldwide Mac sales.
I am not saying that I agree with Munster. I don’t. But your cyphering was based on a flawed assumption.
Someone needs to rate the research analysts, like they rate companies.
Great idea. We need to think of a homepage for it.
ratetheghouls.com is available—act now!
A new Mac Pro could help take the pressure of the iMac demand…and they cost more.