Amazon's Christmas bestsellers: Acer, Apple and Asus
Look what Santa left under Amazon.com's tree this Christmas morning:
- 7 Acer netbooks
- 7 Apple MacBooks
- 4 Asus netbooks
- 2 Samsung netbooks
- 2 MSI netbooks
- 1 OLPC (One laptop per child) XO laptop
- 1 Lenova Ideapad laptop
- 1 Toshiba Satellite laptop
Can you spot the ringer on Amazon's 2008 Christmas-day list of 25 bestselling notebook computers?
You guessed it. It's those seven premium-priced Apple (AAPL) MacBooks in a shopping cart dominated by stripped-down netbooks, heavily discounted Windows notebooks and a 2-for-1 "$100" laptop.
Except for the MacBooks and one $599 Toshiba, every computer on that list sells for less than $500.
The seven MacBooks, by contrast, sell for three times as much: an average of $1,473.41, after rebates.
It's almost as if Macintosh buyers were insensitive to price, even in a recession. In fact, the best-selling Apple on that list isn't the cheapest; it's a $1,299 unibody MacBook marked down to $1,218.98. The cheapest Apple — a $999 white MacBook, marked down to $929.99 — is No. 22.
Over on Amazon's desktop bestseller list, Apple did even better this Christmas morning: 4 of the top 5 are Macs.
Amazon (AMZN) is the world's largest online retailer, but for definitive holiday sales figures we'll have to wait for the quarterly reports.
Who cares about whether or how much you can customize a Mac via online channels. I'm quite confident that Apple performs better than any Windows retailer over the long run because of the Windows-based PC price war. No one wins that battle, except for Apple.
Just wait until January 22nd. $1.80, at least.
Boneheads: You can both customize Macs (at Apple and most retailers) and you can buy them directly from Apple. I doubt anyone is going to regularly undercut their distributors, and certainly not Apple (though you can get deals there on refurbished Macs). You can buy an Apple online or from over 200 Apple owned stores, or any number of other authorized (online or brick & mortar) retailers.
Well, this does prove that people are still buying Mac computers, but it doesn't prove that they're buying them in quantity. At least all the money is going into one company, Apple, whereas the PCs are distributed over several companies. It still seems strange that Apple isn't making any money from selling computers and getting downgraded all to hell. If they weren't selling a fair number of computers, then why would they even make it into the top twenty.
I'm surprised that those HP Touch computers are sellng as well as they are. They seem pretty cool in concept, but I can't imagine I'd want to use that touch screen input a lot. I prefer using a mouse or a trackpad to minimize lots of arm movement since I've had minor shoulder problems.
Well, regardless of how many products Apple sells, the share price will continue to drop, so it really doesn't matter. Fundamentals have nothing to do with share price nowadays.
A word of caution about your data: http://seekingalpha.com/user/104402/comments/symbol/aapl
Really, just sales figure of amazon does not represent the general marke.
For apple laptop, it's pre-configured, so you get it from the chapest place…which is not apple.com. Amazon has a pretty good price so they sell more. For the other brand like dell and hp, they discount heavily on their web site so no one else has better price than themselves…so most higher end laptop are sale through dell and hp themselves. Low end stuff, it's everywhere…it's pre-configured, you get from amazon…when you spend over a thousand dollar, you customize it…
won't buy pre-configure from amazon.
Craig- perhaps you've never been to apple.com, but there are plenty of customization options available… get off your high horse…
And how many of those have Vista? Probably just the Toshiba, other cheap laptops come with XP.
Hard to tell how much of the demand for cheap PCs is driven primarily by price, and not aided by XP. Low-powered machines still come with XP, but the $500 plus ship with Vista. I bet it's not just the economy causing the demand shift to low-dollar notebooks.
I read recently, for an extra $150 Dell will downgrade Vista to XP.
Of course the top sellers are Apples. Apples are not customized. You don't buy a pre-configured PC online. You go to the manufacturer's website and you tell them what you want. PC users demand their machines. Apple users are used to getting told what they want.
Amazon isn't where most would buy a computer. Apple does well there because there are limited places to buy Apple computers. Most people buy computers now directly from the manufactures which have far better deals than Amazon.
Yep, good value buying Macs. I have a 6yr old TiPB, which runs Leopard great. I just put a 64GB SSD in it! I also have a 5 yr old 12" AluPB which runs Leopard fine, though a little slower than my 6yr old TiPB, as the TiPB has a better GPU. I will get a Unibody after MWSF09, just to make sure something new doesn't dropship.
Well… I'd assert what you're seeing is a significant value proposition… People believe there's little to distinguish between generic Windows laptop, while the Apple brand provides substantially better value, and therefore -earns- the higher price in tough times.
(In particular, those with experience with Apple laptops tend to know/believe the hardware is substantially higher quality, resulting in a longer service life on hardware alone. When you add in the stability of MacOS X, you can expect 3-4 years from a laptop; i.e. it can last to graduation, rather than the 2-3 years that most companies now plan to replace WIndows laptops.)
ped: when you first started this column/blog, you were much more skeptical of Apple than you are now. looks like what happened to you is what happens to most people who follow aapl very closely – after awhile, you just start to get and to see what aapl is all about.
glad to see it! merry christmas!
ex ped: I deny everything. merry christmas to you!
PS Merry Christmas PED! Thanks for your contribution to business journalism. I appreciate your balanced approach.
ex ped: Thanks! Merry Christmas to you!
This is one part of the reason why analysts who project Q1'09 earnings of $1.40 per share will miss their target by close to 30%. Apple's earnings will be more than $1.80 per share. A tiny amount of analysis would illuminate this for them, yet the worst among them are on pace to miss Apple's 2009 earnings by $1.5 BILLION dollars.
What that means, if translated into a real world example, is that the share price of an $85 billion market cap company – which is growing revenues at 20%+ per year – is being decided in large part by people who would have .230 batting averages if they played major league baseball.
Not exactly the best and brightest, are they? How can this be good for investors, other than those who profit from shorting? How can this be legal?
The first notebook using Vista was way down at #18. Did Vista hurt all computer sales this year?