Analysts Mixed On IPhone Outlook But Down On Desktops
8:35 am, November 24th, 2008, Ed Sutherland
The week on Wall Street kicked off with a mix of projections for iPhone sales. On Apple desktops, there was consensus: 2009 will be the year of the notebook.
Continuing the revised iPhone outlooks of last week, Openheimer nearly cut in half its expectations for the December quarter, projecting 4.8 million iPhone sales will be reported for the quarter, down from analyst Yair Reiner’s previous 7.5 million. Reiner also cut his forecast of yearly iPhone sales to 21.3 million from 27 million.
At the other end of the spectrum were analysts which announced bullish expectations for iPhone sales. J.P. Morgan expert Mark Moskowitz foresees 26.7 million handsets sold in 2009 while Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid told clients he felt 24.8 million iPhones would sell next year, upping his previous projection of 22.5 million sold.
While there was little agreement on future iPhone demand, no analyst disputed that desktops sales are headed lower as laptops grow in popularity.
In his Monday note, Reid cut his forecast for Mac desktops from 11.1 million to 10.5 million for 2009. Likewise, Oppenheimer’s Reiner shaved his desktop expectations from 1.02 million to 960,000.
Laptops and low-cost netbooks will take up the slack of slower desktop demand, the analyst wrote. Reiner expects Apple will sell 1.61 million MacBooks, up from his previous 1.54 projection.
Apple has said it won’t get into the netbook arena. However, pressure from inexpensive laptops produced by HP, Dell and others could force Cupertino’s hand.
For Apple to continue its upward momentum, “it will likely require the introduction of lower priced offerings,” according to Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi.
Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article
get real, the only reason desktops are down is because everyone with half a clue is sure that there will be new models announced at Macworld. they don’t want to get burned by buying now and being told they can’t return without a restock fee etc. so they wait another month and see what happens.
but you can bet if they fulfill some of those rumors like a quad-core imac or a new mac mini with a faster processor, mini tower structure etc, there will be desktops a plenty being sold
Lucas, on November 24th, 2008 at 9:03 am