
According
to Hoyle...
Apple
Does It Again
macCompanion
May 2010
by
Jonathan Hoyle
jonhoyle@mac.com
http://www.jonhoyle.com
You know, this time I was really worried. After
all, how long can they expect to keep this up? Even
Apple
has its limits. And all the experts said so as well.
Well, I figured it was alright anyway. After all, Apple has had so many back-to-back
great quarters, they could afford to have a mediocre one. Hey, you can't win
'em all, right?
Sheesh, it wasn't even
close. 2010 Q2
saw Apple break another record:
best non-holiday profits,
up a whopping
89.5%. The
record being beat was the one set
the last non-holiday quarter. Sales
(another record):
up 49%. Earnings up 90%.
On reports of this, Apple's bolstered stock caused it to surpass
Microsoft
as having the 2nd largest market capitalization according to the
S&P 500's
float-adjusted index. Now it's
Exxon,
Apple, Microsoft … in that order. I must admit I'd never thought I'd
see the day. For those looking at full market cap, Microsoft is still ahead,
but the edge is narrowing: $275 Billion to $241 Billion.
Oh yeah, and there's still a recession going on too, isn't there?
"Okay okay, money, shmoney. But how are
Macs doing?"
Fair point. After all, if Apple is making oodles of money on
iPods and
iPhones,
but Macs are dying, that would not good news for the Mac faithful.
Well, Mac sales are up 33%
from this same point last year. As the
overall PC market has grown only 24%,
Mac marketshare is going up, yet again. Admittedly, the
2.94 million Macs sold this year
is not a record … it's in 3rd place overall
… behind the last two quarters (which includes the Christmas quarter). And
half of these new Macs go to new users.
And of course, that's not to mention iPhone sales which more than doubled in sales,
up 131%. This
is staggering, considering there are still a large number of people (including myself)
holding out for when the iPhone comes to
Verizon.
And even with iPhones hugely cannibalizing the iPod sales,
iPods dipped a mere 1% in sales,
which is essentially noise. When you factor out the iPhone cannibalization effect
(those would would have bought an iPod, but instead got an iPhone), even the iPod
market is growing. (This is attested to by the fact that Apple's iPod revenue
is the best of any non-holiday quarter in its history.) Apple now owns
70% of the music player market.
We haven't talked about the
iPad
yet, as its sales won't come into play until next quarter.
So yes, some quarter Apple is going to stop breaking records … and even perhaps
show a quarter with mediocre sales. Yes, of course it will happen.
But it sure as hell didn't happen this time.
To see a list of all the According to Hoyle columns,
visit: http://www.jonhoyle.com/maccompanion
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/May2010/Columns/AccordingtoHoyle57.htm