Credit crunch bites into Apple
It looks as if Apple could be a particularly strong victim of consumer cutbacks, with predicted sales dropping for the rest of the year. And at least one sample group shows there’s already been a fall in Apple market share.
The figures come from ChangeWave, an investment analyst and advice site which regularly surveys its subscribers. Each month it asks readers whether they intend buying a new computer in the next 90 days, and if so, which model.
The proportion of would-be laptop buyers opting for a Mac has dropped from 34% to 29%, with the share in desktops falling from 30% to 26%. Both figures are the biggest monthly drop in the survey’s history.
How that would affect actual revenues isn’t clear; after all, a falling market share isn’t quite as painful if the market is growing. However, the signs aren’t great as ChangeWave says the majority of its readers are planning on cutting overall spending, while 40% plan to cut back on electronics purchases for the rest of the year.
As my colleague Leslie Poston explored yesterday, the big economic question is how Apple’s comparatively high pricing policy will fare in an economic slowdown. It’s possible consumers could see new Macs as more of a luxury purchase which they can’t justify whilst tightening their belts. On the upside, Apple does have a bit more room for price cuts if things get really bad.
In terms of actual purchases, the survey found that Apple’s share of sales among the past 90% dropped from 19% to 17% in laptops and 24% to 23% in desktops. That’s not exactly enough to panic about right away, though the trend in Apple share has been upwards since the first ChangeWave survey in January 2006.
Its also worth remembering ChangeWave’s audience isn’t an entirely representative sample of the general public. The Apple share seems notably higher than wider sales trends, suggesting ChangeWave subscribers may be more Mac-friendly in the first place. If this is the case, any change in either direction would likely be magnified from reality.
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