More iPods, fewer Macs?
May 28th 2008
For months, we've reported booming Mac sales and generally flat iPod sales. Now, according to one analyst, that situation has turned around.
Quoting FBR Capital Markets analyst Craig Berger, AppleInsider reports that Apple has increased orders for most iPod models over the past month or so while trimming Mac orders slightly.
"We see greater Shuffle, Classic, and Nano, builds slightly offset by fewer Touch builds, with greater Shuffle builds accounting for most of the increased iPod builds.," said Berger. "Apple used the seasonally slow March quarter to replenish inventory of notebooks, and to build the initial wave of MacBook Air products, thus making second quarter build comparisons difficult." more after the break
"For the second quarter, we see total PC build volumes declining about 15 percent sequentially due to Apple's inventory build in 1Q," he continued.
This information jibes nicely with Shaw Wu's statement that the Mac is recession proof. Moreover, Apple's portable stock building can be viewed as preparation for a product transition--it's widely believed that both the MBP and MacBook will be refreshed in the third quarter.
Berger's also found that the mothership adjusted second quarter iPhone volume by less than 10 percent versus checks from late March.
"Apple's June, September, and December total 3G order fell by 500,000 units versus our prior checks to 11 million units, although our contacts still say Apple will likely reduce this forecast over time," he wrote. "This suggests Apple could sell 11 million iPhones in total in 2008, including its March actual shipments."
Going forward, however, he expects iPhone build volumes to ramp considerably by about 250 percent to 3 million units, ahead the 3G launch.
Editor's note: Sounds to me like everything's coming along very nicely.
