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

To: Phillip C. Lee who wrote (22262)	1/13/1999 12:27:00 AM
From: Marc Newman	Respond to of 213173

Yes, I think Apple held up well today. A new closing high and tomorrow should easily see a new 52-week intraday high, possibly at the open. I think this big bull move has to reach $50, though AAPL might choke on $50 the first time it reaches it and move violently back down a few points. If it breaks through $50, I think we'd see some real short covering. The report should be very good. Nice revenue growth, nice forward-looking statements about the G3 and iMac refresh, and of course good eps. Based on the keynote comments about unit shipments I think we could look at Eric's fabulous work as a conservative estimate. Ie, pretty much count on .80 or so, but don't be surprised by .90 if iMac margins held up until mid-December and there was a good burst of PB buying at the beginning of the quarter. Kudos to Eric for his work tracking where certain Macs are made. He's not only confirmed some AIO sales this quarter, but gives a good reason (Asian production) for the (so far) surprisingly good availability of the Yosemites. The Apple Store is really taking off, if MacMall has sold a few dozen of the new iMacs so far while the Apple Store already has orders for 1700 Limes. It's good to get the hot products to the other resellers first, but the Apple Store should get some units quickly too. The people who order direct from Apple are in a sense the most valuable customers. Anybody have any wild ass guesses for iMac sales this Jan.-March quarter? I'm thinking 300,000 just because anecdotally, I know a lot of people who have been convinced to buy by either the price drop on rev B or the new spruced up iMacs. If Yosemites are hot, this could lead to unit sales of 800,000-900,000 for the "slow" quarter. If the P1 can move in iMac-like quantities (for a portable), maybe Apple can sell four million units this year. When's the last time that ever happened? Of course $500 stripped Macs would help here too. Yosemites should move well because of the sheer value of the things and the long time since the last significant refresh of the line. But I really wonder about the SCSI issues, the USB-only modems, the shockingly blue cases, and especially (my pet peeve) using the iMac mouse and keyboard. On the other hand, getting a great 3-D card in a $1599 Mac is pretty amazing. Soup makes a good point about many Mac buyers expecting their computer to last for years and years. Any consumer who wants a 17" monitor is buying a G3, not an iMac. And many will be using it for 3-5 years. I have a lot of friends who happened to buy PowerCenters in 1996. We're all still using them as our primary computers. Marc