Posted on 12/03/2009 11:54:11 AM PST by Star Traveler
By Neil Hughes
Published: December 3, 2009 - 09:20 AM EST
Apple is predicted to continue its gains on the rest of the PC market in 2010, with Mac sales projected to grow by 26 percent while the industry is forecast to see a 16 percent year-over-year increase.
If the predictions of Robert Cihra, analyst with Caris & Company, prove true, it would give Apple a total 4 percent market share for the 2010 calendar year. Cihra goes into great detail on his analysis in a note issued to investors Thursday morning. Due to Apple controlling its own product cycles, as well as pricing, he believes Mac units will grow at a rate of 1.6 times faster than the entire PC market. On average, the Mac has outpaced the PC market as a whole by 1.8 times over the last 12 quarters.
With just a 4 percent projected total market share in 2010, the Mac still has "considerable headroom" for gains, Cihra said. He believes the company is still the single-best stock investors can buy in the PC market.
"As the most (in fact only) innovative, highest-value (hardware+software) and profitable PC vendor, we estimate Apple having earned a Mac [average selling price] of $1,289 in CY09, down 10% [year over year] but still representing a premium of 1.8x vs. its Wintel peers," the report said. "Even more meaningful, we estimate Apple Macs generating a gross profit-per-unit of nearly $340, which is 2-3x our estimate for its peers, keeping us focused on AAPL as the single best PC market investment."
Caris & Company reiterated its recommendation to buy AAPL stock, and has maintained a price target of $260.
The report also noted a "brutal" erosion of the PC average selling price in 2009, dropping an estimated 16 percent year over year. Portable machines alone were said to have dropped more than 20 percent in price, driven by the popularity of low-cost netbooks.
In this respect, major PC manufacturers like HP are finally catching up with a trend originally achieved by Apple way back in the second quarter of 2007: notebook prices are dropping below desktop prices, as portable machines have become the new "mainstream" PC. Cihra said the first quarter of 2009 was the first time that HP's notebook average selling price dropped below that of its desktops, nearly two years after they had flipped for Apple.
Cihra expects the overall PC market to increase between 15 and 20 percent in 2010, with his current forecast at 16 percent. The report said that signs of turnaround in the PC market are showing, though the economy remains the wildcard in forecasting PC sales for next year.
In September, Apple again significantly outpaced the rest of the PC market, growing 16.4 percent globally year over year, while the market as a whole grew 2.3 percent. Due to Apple's premium-priced products, the company has a worldwide revenue share of about 10 percent, while its market share hovers just north of 4 percent.
Apple has been projected to sell 2.9 million Macs for the final, fourth quarter of 2009. The company's September 2009 quarter proved to be its best ever, with sales of 3 million Macs helping the company's profits rise more than 46 percent.
And yes, I know that is not thier business model.
Well..., a real simple business theorem is that you "don't mess with success"... and Apple is very, very successful...
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
No, they wouldn't. This has been analyzed out the kazoo many times and your conclusion is wrong. Apple's model is better.
If they were selling OEM versions of OS X at the prices that Microsoft sells OEM versions of Windows, Apple would have to sell 90 million copies every year, capturing 45% of the PC market—just to break even with the profits they are currently making selling just 10,000,000 Macs a year... not counting the profits from the iPhone and iPod sales.
So, why do they stick with the big, sole source supplier, Microsoft???
5% is worldwide... in the US it is much higher...
How is it not working? Isn’t profit and not market share the real goal here? They seem to be doing quite well in that department.
I don’t think a hardware company trying to sell...you know...hardware is all that strange.
And love their iPhones, wait, what was that? I think they hate products that make them want to beat their head against the wall.
That depends on how you define "what you get."
There are a lot of people who post this, and I don't get it. In 1997, Apple's low was around $3.30 a share. Now it hovers around $200. I wish I had a poor business plan like theirs.
I have Apple for what I don’t get. I don’t get the aggravation. Every one of these threads has people on it that claim that Mac fanbois are toooo stooooopid to understand that they could buy a Windows machine and get just as much computer for half the money. I HAD Windows machines from the runtime Windows that came with Excel 1.0 to Win2000. I still have to dick with a Windows machine at work. I KNOW WINDOWS! When it’s MY money, I get Macintosh.
I'd have to say it's three things.
Inertia
Ignorance
FUD
I hereby name ALL Apple new articles regarding their amazing, stupendous, innovative, unstoppable, premium market growth.....
FAPPLE.
There I said it.
FAPPLE.
There I said it.
Ummmm..., I can always tell an imitation/imitator of Apple... they leave out the little "i".... LOL...
Markeshare doesn't necessarily equal profitability and value to the shareholders. Check out this chart of Apple vs. Microsoft since just after Jobs came back. The Apple chart includes two stock splits, the Microsoft chart one. The Microsoft stock is 34% lower, the Apple stock 600% higher.
They need compatibility with the apps. OSX is twice the OS of windows, the issue is compatibility with apps, and flexibility of platforms.
“Apple would have to sell 90 million copies every year, capturing 45% of the PC market.”
Just to break even, you mean, to keep up with the profits they are making now? Profit wise they are a niche company and will always be so with this strategy. What happens if Windows 7 reverses the trend and they start to feel the pinch? As it is they are dependent on Windows releases.
No, they are not.
OK, I’ll put on my former Silicon Valley engineer hat for a moment and ‘splain to you why, because it is the same reason why companies like cisco don’t allow you to run IOS on just any box with a conforming CPU and a bunch of ethernet interfaces:
There are two issues at work here. The first issue is one of gross and profit margins. The profit margin on software appears high (NB that word “appears”) but in fact software as a product is a relentless do-over and do-more. Because you need to have more and more software developers as your system becomes larger and carries around more legacy, you find that your assumptions (and MANY software startups make this assumption, BTW) about gross and profit margins on the software-only business go up in smoke as your headcount goes up with the system size and complexity.
Ah, but hardware... oh, that’s the gravy train man. Hardware engineers are much more productive than software engineers - the tooling, simulation and development aides for the HW guys are nothing short of marvelous. You don’t need to hire as many hardware guys these days to crank out a good hardware design - and once they’re done, their amount of “support” cost for the hardware alone is usually a very small fraction of the costs for the software side.
At outfits like cisco and Apple, hardware subsidizes the software side.
Next issue: the compatibility nightmares. When you control the WHOLE system, both hardware and software, things “just work” - because the engineering staff works together, and if the hardware guys do something that really complicates the software team’s lives, the software guys will wander over into the cube farm of hardware guys and say “Hey! WTF, huh? Gimme a break!” and the problem is fixed before the product ships.
Writing software to run on a generic off-the-shelf (OTS) hardware platform is about as much fun as hitting yourself in the head with a ball peen hammer — all you can think about is how good it’s gonna feel when you stop.
Concentrating on the total number of units shipped is a big mistake, one made over and over again in American management. It is why GM is where it is now, for example. They worried about retaining the “#1 in units shipped” position over obsessing about profits per unit sold. Look at where it got them. Same deal for newspapers, too. Given the amount of PC’s coming out of China, and the razor-thin margins that the Chinese are making, there’s no way to make a real profit competing with those guys.
*In 1997, Apple’s low was around $3.30 a share. Now it hovers around $200. *
The iPhone and the iPod are pretty much responsible for that.
Look, some people want a Rolls Royce and can afford one and some people just want a Honda. Both companies have done well for themselves at what they do but will never intrude on the others market. End of.
It’s vertical integration. The problem is can Macboys really justify paying twice as much to get something of lesser value? I know I can’t. From an economic standpoint, Macs are the cadillacs, and we all know how the big 3 did against smaller, cheaper and more fuel efficient vehicles.
Sure it might ‘just work’, but I’d rather not have to buy a new machine when it ‘just breaks’. It’s nice to be able to add the components that I want, and not rely 100 percent upon the largess of Jobs.
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