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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Habib who wrote (18582)	9/27/1998 7:12:00 PM
From: Phillip C. Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213181

Richard, I agree. I don't bank on anything with big positive, just to cheer everybody here based on the facts from my viewpoints. Phil

To: Richard Habib who wrote (18582)	9/27/1998 10:17:00 PM
From: Andrew Danielson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213181

The iMac numbers game When's the last time we had 25+ messages on a SUNDAY? There seems to be further doubts about the numbers put out by these studies. There also seems to be doubts about how much iMac demand has persisted from the first few days. We need to be sure and separate these two issues. Having lots of iMacs in stock at various stores right now may indicate demand has fallen off, but it has nothing to do with the veracity of the August sales numbers. Now, to speak of August. Richard in one post questioned how strong July was given that August sales from one source was compared to July in relative terms. I've already stated this in a previous post, but I'll post it again. If you go to Macweek, find the article that pinpoints the ZDnet story on August Macintosh sales. They give retail sales numbers from previous months. May sales 9% lower than April June sales 27% higher than May July sales 12% higher than June August sales 109% higher than July (20% w/out iMac) Since we know the total unit sales of April-June (Q3), we can create an equation for figuring out April sales. And by figuring out April, we can use the percentages to figure out sales numbers on each subsequent month. Now, remember, these figures are retail US-only derived. International sales may be higher or lower, and education sales are not included either. We have no specific reason to believe that international or education sales were markedly different from the US in the months prior to the iMac's release (through July). If all sales held the same momentum, then we can use the above figures to calculate July sales as being 269,238 units. If you want to see the specifics of the calculation, see my previous post at Message 5831019 Three concrete sources of data currently exist for August Apple sales. ZDnet, a US retail-only measure, states: 109% increase in sales in August over July 20% increase in sales in August over July if iMac is not factored in. PC Data, a US retail-only measure stated in the Washington Post as representing 35% of all US retail sales states: 125%+ increase in sales in August over July (stated indirectly through Apple's market share increase from 6% in July to 13.5% in August) 7.1% overall iMac market share (not easily translatable to hard figures) Hence, two independent sources indicate August sales growth of 109-125%. A single source indicates indirectly (through above calculation) that July sales themselves were strong. Computerware numbers mentioned in a C/Net article notes that their company sold 1,240 iMacs for August and 1,837 units overall. This compares to 500 units sold August '97 for a 267% increase. Also noted from Computerware was a confirming statistic that G3 (non-iMac) sales increased more than 20% from July to August. That means two different sources also indicate a 20%+ increase in G3 sales, strengthening the notion that it's not just the iMac that will contribute to increased sales. Computerware also reported the statistics on iMac users, stating 12% were Windows users and 15% first-time buyers (based on a survey of 500 customers) Then there's Steve Job's comment that they were shipping "tens of thousands" of iMacs per week. Such a term seems to indicate at LEAST 20,000 (otherwise he would use a term like "more than ten thousand") per week. This puts a bare minimum Q4 iMac shipment in at 140,000 but does not institute a ceiling (well, actually it probably means less than about 600-700,000 iMacs, if you can call that a ceiling). Finally, you must understand that even less-than-spectacular iMac sales is not a bad thing, per se, if that is what analysts expected. One article showed AAPL bull Lou Mazuchelli's iMac numbers at 450,000 for through the end of the year. That's not a very high hurdle to jump over, and the hurdles of less-bullish analysts would logically be even lower. It's a game of expectations, just like earnings. Andrew