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Analyst: Wall St. unwisely ignoring MacBook cuts

updated 04:35 pm EDT, Fri June 12, 2009

Piper on MacBook cuts

Wall Street firms may be missing out on the true significance of Apple's MacBook price cuts, claims Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. Prices have fallen several hundred dollars in some cases, which Munster argues should mitigate some of the predicted sales decline for the June quarter. Updated MacBooks could push the month of June's growth up as much as 5 percent year-over-year, according to Piper figures.

By contrast Munster observes that when new Macs were announced in March, Apple's desktop sales rose 3 percent.

May MacBook sales are expected to be down 2 to 5 percent, but quarterly decline is now forecast to be no more than 10 percent, even if final May figures show a drop as heavy as 28. Street estimates have called for an 8 percent decline.
iPod sales are meanwhile forecast to slide 5 to 10 percent in May, and 7 percent in the June quarter as a whole. Though not favorable for Apple, the drops are in the range of earlier analysis.

 
Previous Comments

They're always saying

06/12, 10:52pm reply

WS doesn't get Apple. What is so unusual about this company that Wall Street doesn't understand. I thought WS was supposed to catch on eventually about Apple, yet it continues not to understand. Apple must run the most unconventional financial model ever conceived. This company must be built on unfathomable speculation. A company that continues to make money, but each quarter is a guessing game. I hear the stores are doing rather well, yet the stock is dropping once again all out of proportion. $9 drop in a week's time based on nothing.

Constable Odo

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Joined: Aug 2007

+6

Comment buried. Show

macbook prices

06/13, 05:30am reply

So microsoft's advertising really worked, Apple finally is having to fight the (real?) perception that their computers are overpriced.

chucker

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Joined: Mar 2007

-12

@chucker

06/14, 09:29am reply

Dell's net income dropped 63% during their Q1 FY'10 quarter

Dell's quarterly revenue also fell to $12.3 billion during the first quarter, a 23 per cent drop from the previous year.

Looks like Microsoft's advertising is affecting Dell, too? Or could some of this be the greater economic climate, @chucker?

akulavolk

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-1

Odo reflects my views

06/14, 12:04pm (1 reply) reply

I watch FAst Money and CNBC stuff occasionally. They swing from being correctly skeptical of govt. to being Ayn Rand ranting, myopic corporatists, but at least they are honest. And when they talk about Apple or Microsoft, they might as well be talking about Hyundai and GM. They look at technicals and commodities without any reference to creativity or technological paradigms.

No wonder Wall Street drifts from reality as often as it does. I told a good friend who is a San Fran investor about 6 years ago to buy Apple. I had no money to do it and he reasonably gave me all the "trader" reasons why he wouldn't and yet because he didn't read Apple Forumss every other day he had no idea what I was seeing emerge. Apple eventually did what we back then thought it could do - though not as quickly - but he couldn't perceive the gestalt that was there the whole time.

Reductionism in finance works like reductionism in Science and Tech. For a while it makes things seem easier ... until you hit a wall where the complexity of reality makes your tools ineffective and you have to go with your gut or develop new tools.

MacnnChester

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Joined: Jun 2007

+1

Sales vs. revenue

06/14, 06:57pm reply

The sales numbers might increase because of the price reduction, but that doesn't mean profit will increase, esp. if Apple had to slash margins to make the cuts.

LouZer

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Joined: Nov 2000

+1

Re: @chucker

06/14, 06:59pm reply

Dell's net income dropped 63% during their Q1 FY'10 quarter

Dell's quarterly revenue also fell to $12.3 billion during the first quarter, a 23 per cent drop from the previous year.

Looks like Microsoft's advertising is affecting Dell, too? Or could some of this be the greater economic climate, @chucker?


Dell's sales dropped, but that was caused completely by a drop in enterprise sales. Dell's consumer sales actually rose, which is to whom MS is marketing to. So maybe it is helping...

testudo

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

-2

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