According
to Hoyle...
Apple
Does It Again
macCompanion
May 2010
by
Jonathan Hoyle
jonhoyle@mac.com
http://www.jonhoyle.com
You know, this time I
was really worried. After all, how long can they expect to
keep this up? Even Apple has its limits. And all
the experts said so as well.
Well, I figured it was alright anyway. After all, Apple has
had so many back-to-back great quarters, they could afford to have a
mediocre one. Hey, you can't win 'em all, right?
Sheesh, it wasn't even close. 2009 Q2 saw Apple break another
record: best non-holiday profits, up a whopping 89.5%. The
record being beat was the one set the last non-holiday
quarter. Sales (another record): up 49%. Earnings
up 86%.
On reports of this, Apple's bolstered stock caused it to surpass
Microsoft as having the 2nd largest market capitalization according to
the S&P 500's float-adjusted index. Now it's Exxon,
Apple, Microsoft … in that order. I must admit I'd
never thought I'd see the day. For those looking at full
market cap, Microsoft is still ahead, but the edge is narrowing: $275
Billion to $241 Billion.
Oh yeah, there's still a recession going on too, isn't there?
"Okay okay, money, shmoney. But how are Macs doing?"
Fair point. After all, if Apple is making oodles of money on
iPods and iPhones, and Macs are dying, that's not good news for the Mac
faithful.
Well, Mac sales are up 33% from this same point last year. As
the overall PC market has grown only 24%, Mac marketshare is going up,
yet again. Admittedly, the 2.94 million Mac sold this year is
not a record … it's in 3rd place overall … behind
the last two quarters (which includes the Christmas quarter).
And half of these new Macs go to new users.
And of course, that's not to mention iPhone sales which more than
doubled in sales, up 131%. This is staggering, considering
there are still a large number of people (including myself) holding out
for when the iPhone comes to Verizon.
And even with iPhones hugely cannibalizing the iPod sales, iPods dipped
a mere 1% in sales, which is essentially noise. When you
factor out the iPhone cannibalization effect (those would would have
bought an iPod but instead got an iPhone), even the iPod market is
growing. (This is attested to by the fact that Apple's iPod
revenue is the best of any non-holiday quarter in its
history.) Apple now owns 70% of the music player market.
We haven't talked about the iPad yet, as its sales won't come into play
until next quarter.
So yes, some quarter Apple is going to stop breaking records
… and even perhaps show a quarter with mediocre
sales. Yes, of course it will happen.
But it sure as hell didn't happen this time.
To see a list of
all the
According to Hoyle columns, visit:
http://www.jonhoyle.com/maccompanion
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/May2010/Columns/AccordingtoHoyle57.htm
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