Jim, that infobeads graph was pretty amazing, wasn't it? Lots of good little stories about Apple's improving sales are making the rounds. And now everyone who was waiting for the first price cut to buy a G3 is going for it. Of course at $1999 I'm tempted by the 20th anniversary Mac. Might even make a good investment.
The latest issue of Fortune has a pretty interesting article on Apple's education sales. Once again it sounds negative with a "Cutting into Apple's Core" headline, picture of a family who now use a PC at home and a school, a quote from an IT guy at a school who expresses worry about Apple's financial condition, etc. And like most of these articles it has quotes from teachers who love the Mac and from districts with no plans to change.
However, buried in the piece is the most important part: The average school district plans to spend $407,000 on "instructional technology" in the 1997-1998 school year, up from $274,000 last year. I read this as essentially a 50% gain. Since Apple's share is not falling that rapidly in the educational space (still at 43% of new purchases, and 53% installed base) it appears to me that Apple is going to increase its sales to schools this year. That's growth and should show up the next two quarters. (We can thank new federal grants for much of the increase.)
I wonder if we're at a point similar to Novell the past few days. They didn't have a great quarter but did lightly beat expectations. But this was the quarter of worry because Novell has a big upgrade cycle starting this summer. Thus, the money not only poured into Novell before the quarterly report, since it should be the last bad quarter, but has poured in afterwards as well. It might be happening now with Apple.
Having said that, I sold my light trading position Friday in the mid-$23s feeling that we were temporarily topped out. I also fear potential inventory writeoffs this quarter. But the main thing is that I can't bear to sell a single share of THQI for AAPL. It's relaxing to have money in a company that isn't always tied up in turmoil.
We'll see how I feel in a week or two.
Good luck,
Marc |
