Analyst, Amazon say Apple’s Thanksgiving weekend sales very good
Retailers around the nation have reported brisk Thanksgiving Weekend sales largely on the back steep discounts and heavy promotion. However, our favorite countercyclical fruit company apparently has done very well indeed without heavy advertising or deep price cutting.
The Associated Press (Money Telegram), quoting Apple analyst on the rebound Shaw Wu, reports that his in-the-field observations found strong foot traffic at Apple Stores and spot shortages of some Apple products, such as the white MacBook, at third-party resellers.
Whereas Apple offered limited 4 to 10 percent discounts on a limited number of products, authorized resellers listed some items at 20 percent off, a bit more inline with the spirit of the season. Thereupon, the mothership’s recently revised iMacs and MacBooks are said to be in short supply at some retailers.
Previously, Shaw Wu estimated that Apple would sell 2.9 million Macs in the holiday, a figure well above the Street consensus but one that he now believes to be too conservative.
Reading the tea leaves…
Amazon’s electronics best seller Top 25 includes six Apple iPods with the number one item being the Kindle. Likewise, there are five Mac mini and iMac models listed in the desktop Top 25 and five Apple portables in the laptop Top 25, as well.
Although this year’s Amazon showing is anything but bad, Apple doesn’t have any number one products, at least as of this writing, which is a break from the company’s superlative domination of the best seller charts over the last four or five years. However, I could be wrong when saying that I think the company’s doing better in the desktop category than it has in recent years with two Mac minis and three iMacs charting well.
So, overall, we’re seeing some mixed signals, though no one’s predicting Apple will have a poor holiday quarter. In fact, even modest growth over last year will yield yet another record setting performance for the company.
Thereupon, I’ve said this more than a couple times over the last year and I’ll keep saying it—quality and value sells. And, even with Vista SP4 Windows 7 are still crap at any price…
What’s your take?
Related Posts:
