The Mac's cyber Black Friday
Apple's in-store sales fell sharply from 2008, but its online store traffic soared
Apple's busy Fifth Ave. store. Photo: ped
A pair of reports from Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster tell the story.
The first, issued early Monday morning, gave the results of a headcount performed at three Apple (AAPL) retail stores on Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday selling season. Although the stores were busy, his team counted an average of 8.3 Mac sales per hour, down 36% from the 13 Macs per hour they observed on the same day last year.
Munster's second note, sent nearly seven hours later, reported on comScore data indicating that sales at traffic on Apple's online store Friday was up 39% year over year.
"Apple's online store had a big day on Black Friday," Munster concludes, "offsetting the y/y decline in our retail store checks."
Based on NPD data that showed U.S. Mac sales up 7% year over year in October, Munster had previously estimated that Apple would sell 2.856 million Macs in the quarter that ends Dec. 26. That's up from 2.524 million Macs in the same quarter last year, but down from the record 3.053 million Apple sold last quarter.
UPDATE: More field checks and estimates below the fold from Kaufman Bros.' Shaw Wu, Thomas Weisel's Doug Reid and Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
These just in:
- Wu writes: "Our field checks indicate strong foot traffic at Apple stores and that Macs, iPhones and iPods saw strong uptake … We believe our forecast looking for 2.9 million Macs is likely conservative. Currently, consensus estimates look for 2.85 million Macs."
- Reid's team did store checks at 41 authorized retail locations in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. and came away with "increased confidence" in his estimate of 3.06 million Mac sales this quarter, up 21% year over year.
- Whitmore's team got the shoe-leather prize, conducting store checks over Black Friday weekend at more than 120 Apple retail stores and 25-plus AT&T outlets. He concludes that both Macs and iPhones are tracking "in-line to above" his unit estimates (8.5 million iPhones and 3 million Macs) while iPods are tracking "roughly in-line" with his estimate of 23 million.
CORRECTION: Several news sites — including this one — repeated Munster's assertion that Apple's online sales on Black Friday increased 39% year over year. But comScore's report clearly states that it was measuring Apple.com's unique visitors, not its online sales. See here.
What I find most interesting is the variance on observed Apple retail store sales between Gene Munster's crew and that of Shaw Wu. The increase in unique visitors to the Apple online store as reported by comScore is an encouraging sign. When it comes to Apple's online store analysis I defer to deagol's exhaustive work tracking order numbers.
Both Gene Munster and Shaw Wu are comparatively close on their Mac unit estimates. I'm in at 3 million units and I suspect both analysts will raise their forecasts to or slightly above that number.
As far as the Chris Whitmore team is concerned, 8.5 million iPhone units sold in the quarter would be an unqualified success. I believe Gene Munster has publicly stated his iPhone unit estimate for the quarter is 9.3 million units. I'm challenged to reach that high based on available data, but all three analysts (Munster, Wu and Whitmore) are at least indirectly forecasting a record quarter for revenue and earnings when the iPod is added to the mix based on their Mac and iPhone unit sales projections.
Chris Whitmore is offering an intriguing estimate of 23 million iPod units for the quarter. That would represent a slight uptick from last year's unit sales which came in at 22.727 million units. That might be attributed to strong iPod touch sales expectations. I'd like to hear more.
Not to leave Doug Reid without mention, his 3.06 million Mac estimate would represent essentially a flat sequential sales performance but a performance that would be quite welcome considering the robust September quarter Apple experienced based in part on an extraordinary back-to-school selling season and superb uptake of the refreshed MacBook Pro line.
With all four pros throwing out these kinds of unit sales estimates across the product lines, the Black Friday results become more a curiosity than a concern.
PED, I think you are one of the best Apple commenters, but Munster's analysis is total BS. You can't make any kind of statistically correct estimate based on observing 3 stores for a few hours EVEN IF they were the same stores you observed the year before.
Munster's analysis is trash. Please ask any one versed in statistics so you can debunk this tripe. It's not worthy of your excellent reporting.
MadLipzFree alone has been worth getting my iPhone! This is the best App for my whole family! I even bought the full version of MadLipz so I could get unlimited downloads.
Apple's biggest problem this holiday season? Manufacturing enough product. They literally can't keep up with the demand.
Since there are rumors that Apple will no longer provide warranty repairs on computers and devices contaminated by cigarette smoke and residues, the next question is :
How many of these buyers are smokers and how many are non-smokers ?
How many of the buyers are non-smokers who have smokers in their homes ?
How many buyers have their Mac devices next to the bar-b-que pit ?
How many buyers have their Mac devices with them in the bathroom ? The bathroom is a high humidity area – many cell phone manufacturers have indicators within their cell phones to detect if the cell phone has been exposed to water.
Since I don't smoke cigarettes or other types of materials, this is pure hilarity for me. How many commentators are now going to call Apple's stock prices "smokin' high" or say "Apple smoked the competition".
I doubt Steve Jobs wants to hugely increase market share, so if Apple loses the lung-impaired customers so much the better.
I can´t beleive you´re being paid for writing such a lame column. Does Fortune has any on-line editor at all?
ex ped: Yes, it does.
"comScore data indicating that sales at Apple's online store Friday were up 39% year over year"
I'm pretty sure comScore said it was online traffic (unique visitors) that was up 39%, not sales. Big difference.
Validates my research on web orders published on Saturday (http://aaplmodel.blogspot.com). I wonder if anyone noticed it before today? Looks like at least Munster missed it. 
Ex ped: Munster clearly states the comScore data as sales. Here's the sentence:
"comScore data indicates sales at Apple's online store were up 39% y/y on Black Friday (11/27); overall eCommerce was up 11% y/y."
But as Deagol points out above, Munster was wrong. Fixing.
Well, anecdotally, it kind of makes sense. I went to my Apple Store in Portland, Maine, and it was so crowded I didn't buy anything, but when I got home I ordered a MBA from Apple's online store for my mom!
In-store -36%, online +39%. BUT, what percentage of total sales do the physical stores represent? And, how did resellers do, and what percent of the total do they represent? Without these answers, this is a fruitless exercise.
John B Goode is very funny (below). I've got a great idea too. Everyone, all together now, when you buy something from an Apple store, walk out of the store backwards so it seem like you are coming in. Tomorrow's headline?
Mac Sales Way Down, Returns Off the Charts!
Apple is going to be next TECH GIANT. Start investing into it.
http://keetaro.blogspot.com/2009/11/apple-next-500-pounds-gorilla.html
Why would any one crawl out of a store to avoid being counted by a research firm and then thing others are doing the same? Plus how exactly do you crawl on the ground with a mac computer???
I bought a Mac at my local Mac Store and there was a research guy counting folks who had bought stuff as they came out. I crawled out on my hands and knees, so was hidden behind other shoppers. So, he never counted me.
I feel certain many others are doing the same. The data is skewed.
So much for ad hoc market research.
Apple needs to improve their customer service, in the Apple stores.
Their iPod and iPhone customers make it nearly impossible to get any help with a Mac computer.
Those seeking a Mac computer either have to go on line or to another retailer.
I get way better service for my Mac needs at Micro Center, than at the Apple Store.
Apple also won't discuss anything about a product they don't make…..which in the case of the Mac mini, doesn't compute, because the only reason to buy the mini, is to use a non-Apple monitor.
The only positive thing, is they are still way better to deal with, than Microsoft.
Hard to understand how anyone takes Munster's in-store count seriously enough to repeat it.
It means very, very little.
But then you might need to add a rider – Shaw Wu has said Apple had a great weekend and he's predicting 2.9m Macs sold in the quarter..
ex ped: Thanks. Added Kaufman Bros.' estimates, along with reports from Deutsche Bank and Thomas Weisel. Note that only Munster's team seems to have actually counted sales.
Munster only looked at three stores. I'm surprised he would place whatever reputation he has behind such a statistically insignificant number of observations
ex ped: Several readers have already made the same point below. What nobody seems to notice is that Munster's team actually counted how many Macs were sold per hour. Other analysts did "retail checks" at large numbers of stores, but none of them did any counting.