Early signs point to Apple having a good Black Friday
Analysts are making early predictions that Apple did well in the post-Thanksgiving sales. The forecasts seem to be somewhat less than scientific but have helped the company perform decently by today’s stock market standards.
Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel Partners surveyed staff from 47 Apple stores, 35 Best Buys and two Wal-Marts and concluded:
Our checks suggest that (Apple) continues to gain market share in PCs, smartphones and MP3 players despite the challenge of higher price points in difficult economic times.
Of course, any survey of market share is going to be swayed pretty significantly by having the majority of your research coming from stores which only sell one company’s product.
Meanwhile Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers said his reports showed Apple stores were particularly busy. He also pointed to Amazon running out of stock of the iPod touch as a sign Apple’s quarterly performance will be strong. There could be something in that, though it’s perfectly possible Amazon simply screwed up its stock levels. Equally, sales of the device might easily be equal to or worse than expected and it’s just that more buyers opted for the convenience of Amazon rather than braving stores.
The most detailed assessment came from Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray who sent observers to a sample of Apple stores and reckons Apple averaged sales of 13 Macs per hour over the weekend, more than six times their usual sales levels. He found iPhone sales were up by a little less than three-fold and speculated this may be because it’s easier to give a Mac as a Christmas gift as you don’t have to worry about network service sign-ups.
As tenuous as some of these forecasts may be, they can have a genuine effect on a company’s market standing before the actual sales figures come out. Following the analyst reports, Apple’s stock fell by 4 percent yesterday. That may sound like a pretty rough day, but is actually pretty decent given the market as a whole dropped 8 percent after poor economic figures were released. Dell, which was pegged as a poor performer by many of the same analysts, suffered a 10 percent drop.
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