Maybe I've been burned once too often and am unnecessarily
skittish, but I'm wary of the Q2 earnings announcement. On the one
hand, you appear to have solid G3 sales momentum. On the other, you
have general sluggishness in PC demand(particularly in Japan), poor
sales at CompUSA, and very weak results in Motorola's chip unit (not
to mention a lack of PowerBooks on the market). What we could end up
seeing is Apple posting decent market share performance but still
falling short of the bottom-line expectations. Looking a little
further out, though, I think the Wall Street PowerBook line is going
to be a very hot seller (if, of course,Apple can make them fast
enough). Comments?
All indications shown indicate to me that Q2 should be better than
anticipated. There is 7% pc growth in Japan this year and it should
not be bad for Apple in Q2, particularly G3's sales. Most of G3's
chips were supplied by IBM, rather than Motorola last quarter.
Besides, Motorola's problem is in Asia currency crisis causing
slow-down sales. CompUSA's sub-$1000 pc sales caused them problems,
where Apple was not involved in that disaster area in Q2, they sold
pretty decent amount of G3's.
Phil |
