Forest for the trees: Powerbooks the key
I was tossing around some numbers for Q4, and I came to one conclusion: it's the powerbooks that matter, not the iMacs.
Even the relatively low-sounding numbers coming from the rumor sites of 60,000 launch and 20,000 weekly put the quarterly number around 150,000 iMacs. That virtually guarantees good unit shipment growth--at least 740,000 vs. 644,000 from last quarter. Great.
HOWEVER, iMacs are lower margin, and lower unit priced than the rest of the G3 line. It's the Powerbooks, with their huge margins and unit prices that will make the ultimate effect on the Q4 revenue and bottom line numbers. On AAPL Investors, Eric Yang gave a preliminary number of 150,000 Powerbooks shipped this quarter at an AUP of $2,800.
If shortages cause a mere 30,000 drop in shipments to 120,000 (still higher than the 103,000 from last quarter), we then have 84 million less in revenues. Enough to turn Eric's suggestion of 1,500 revenue back to a sequentially flat number of 1416.
Therefore, the suggestion that AAPL may be sacrificing Powerbooks in favor of the iMac hype machine is a little bit chilling as an AAPL investor looking forward to a good quarterly report.
Andrew |
