May Mac sales better than expected, iPod worse
Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster has worked his magic on the raw market share data released Monday by the NPD Group, and he sees a silver lining in a lot of negative numbers.
The NPD data relevant to Apple's (AAPL) product lines show:
- Mac units down 3% year-to-year and their average selling price (ASP) flat.
- iPod units down 18% year-to-year and ASP down 7.5%.
From this Munster finds:
- A "positive" for Apple shares in the Mac numbers. He was expecting NPD to report units down 2% to 5% in May, but he expects them to pick up in June following last week's price cuts. The Street is expecting Mac sales to end the quarter down 8% for the year and Munster was expecting them to be down 4% to 12%. NPD's new data, and the appeal of the new MacBooks, leads him to think Apple could beat those expectations.
- The iPod numbers, Munster writes, are "in-line" with expectations, although he had estimated that they would be down 5% to 10% and in fact they were much worse — down 18% for May. Average selling price was worse too, down 7.5% versus his estimate of 7%. But Munster estimates that by the end of quarter, Apple will have shipped 9.5 million to 10.5 million iPods, in line with the Street's estimate of about 10 million. Moreover, he is expecting iPod shipments to accelerate in June, tied to the free iPods Apple is giving students who buy the new, lower-priced MacBooks. He also expects ASPs to grow a bit — to 7% — by the end of June thanks to the new, higher-priced iPod shuffles that began shipping in mid-March.
Munster is sticking with his buy rating for Apple with a target price of $180 a share.
Yes I agree with Tom that it would be interesting to see how much iphone is selling compared to other phones.
Dave: PC sales overall were up 12% year-over-year.
ex ped: Mark: What's your source for that? Gartner's latest report (April) had worldwide PC sales down 9% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2009. See here.
Munster says that with his adjustments, NPD retail data is pretty close on US sales (a portion of both Apple's Americas sales and Retail sales segments). If Apple does significantly better or worse in the rest of the world (its Europe, Japan, and Other segments), then NPD's data can be off.
Munster was almost exact last quarter, and high during the last two quarters in 2008.
It would be interesting/helpful to compare the Apple sales numbers to either industry averages or to at least one or more competitors (e.g. Dell, HP, Lenovo). When I hear "Apple sales down by 4%" that could be A Bad Thing if other PC vendor sales rose by 5%, but A Good Thing if other PC vendor sales dropped by 10%…
dave
Does anyone have good data on how close NPD has been in the past? Since Apple doesn't release sales numbers except quarterly, this must be based upon indirect measures and speculation. It may not be worth very much.
I hope Munster understands that iPhones are also iPods. You really need to sum iPods PLUS iPhones to get an accurate tally.
The PC market up 12% year-over-year number I got from a Silicon Alley Insider. According to the author, they're NPD numbers.
Hopefully the link I post works, otherwise I'm sure you'll easily find the article at their web site.
Apple's Mac Loses Market Share In May, But Gains Revenue Share (AAPL)
ex ped: Thanks for the link. I checked in with Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer, who wrote the piece. His source was a Morgan Stanley report that is modeling -11% growth for the year. The same report notes that May's 12% increase in PC unit sales was accompanied by decrease in average selling price of 19%. Sounds like a lot of netbooks sold at thinner and thinner margins.