Charlie Wolf: How the Mac roared back
Needham & Co.'s senior analyst explains how Apple outgrew the PC market seven fold
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Needham's Charlie Wolf was as surprised as anyone when Apple (AAPL) reported that it had sold a record 3.05 million Macintosh computers in its fiscal fourth quarter — a 16.4% increase compared with just 2.3% growth in the PC market.
The estimate Wolf had filed — 2.63 million units for the quarter — was one of Wall Street's lowest. (See here.)
So he took a close look at how Apple did it, and on Tuesday in a detailed report to clients he offered his answer: the home market.
"The twin drivers of the Mac’s rebound," he writes in his executive summary, "were the home market’s continued share gains in the PC market and the Mac’s share gains in the home market itself. Shipments in the worldwide home market increased 18.1% compared to an 11.5% decline in all other PC segments, while Mac shipments in the home market increased 28.8%. In the Western European home market, shipments rose an impressive 58.9%.
Putting lipstick on Microsoft's pigs
Windows Mobile. Logo: Microsoft
At the end of a long report on the Apple Stores — and the corner he believes they have turned — Needham analyst Charles Wolf turned his attention this week to Microsoft (MSFT) and its plans to launch a fleet of company-branded stores of its own, complete with wall-sized digital screens, spaces for free public events and "Guru" bars to deal with customers’ software complaints.
Let's hope Steve Ballmer isn't on Needham's mailing list, because Wolf's two-page description of Microsoft's efforts and its products may be most dismissive ever produced by a Wall Street analyst. He even goes so far as to evoke the old lipstick joke that got Barack Obama in so much trouble with Sarah Palin during the primaries.
"Microsoft has always touted itself as an innovator," Wolf begins in a section entitled The Sincerest Form of Flattery. "But the company’s true genius has stemmed from its ability to copy the ideas of others."
And the company it's most fond of copying, he says, is Apple (AAPL).
