Apple had ‘blowout’ holiday quarter
If you looked at Apple, just Apple, and extrapolated to the whole economy, you would probably think the nation was enjoying an economic boom. Although we don’t have anything official from the mothership, the legible tea leaves to date indicate the Cupertino, California-based Mac, iPod and iPhone maker once again had a very merry Christmas.
Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers (via AppleInsider) is saying he believes Apple moved nearly 10 million iPhones — if true, a single quarter record — nearly 3 million Macs and over 20 million iPods in the just concluded holiday shopping quarter.
“Despite continued difficult macroeconomic conditions and ever rising investor expectations, we anticipate Apple could still post material upside to recently raised consensus estimates, not to mention its conservative guidance, driven by strength in all three major product lines, particularly its iPhone business,” said Wu in a note to clients.
“We are leaving our forecast at 2.9 million Macs (consensus at 2.85 million). For iPods, we remain comfortable with our aggressive forecast of 22 million units (consensus at 20 million),” he added. “Our sources indicate continued iPod touch momentum driven by the iTunes App Store and strong uptake in its new iPod nano with built-in video camera.”
Meanwhile, NPD Group (via AppleInsider also points to roaring Mac sales as unit volume Apple’s Mac-only iWork office productivity suite increased by 50 percent this year through November.
“These have been, I think, pretty successful products for [Apple], generating a lot of pretty decent average selling prices and decent revenue numbers,” said Steven Baker, vice president, industry analysis.
iWork has benefited from Apple’s aggressive $29 Snow Leopard pricing. Moreover, the low OS X + iWork + iLife family price of $149 has led Mac owners to go for the across-the-board upgrade rather than a piecemeal approach.
Hey, who wishes they purchased a few hundred shares of AAPL when it was at $80 on Jan. 20 of last year, hmm? D’oh!
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