Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Tex]

re Amazon rankings

I would have a hard time buying that Amazon's sales exceeded Apple Retail. On the other hand, I think that Amazon rankings are probably of some utility in the nature of a survey; Amazon purchases are may be (but I have no data) strongly associated with online purchases generally, meaning that the Amazon sample though relatively small might have utility as a sort of survey of online shoppers.

Apple's retail stores are deliberately placed in high-traffic spots, though, and are intended to capture folks who weren't looking to buy a Mac at all. In that sense, I think the Apple retail store is enormously important. On the other hand, as the Mac base grows, existing customers' upgrade cycles and additional family computers and so on may be coming largely from no-sales-tax online vendors and so on. I see Apple retail as indicative of the fire behind new-to-Mac growth, which could definitely hit a bump in the event of a depression hitting during a boom in $200 netbooks.

I don't get the idea Apple is selling badly this quarter, but Apple isn't competing with "badly" -- Apple competes against a public expectation of insane performance, and is apt to get hammered for turning in merely above-average results.

That said, the desktop line is definitely in need of a refresh. I've wanted a tower, but I've been waiting for the Next Big Thing in desktops before going for it. I've heard from others with the same thinking. If I'm made to wait much longer, I may end up with a high-end iMac, which will stave off "need" for long enough Apple will risk losing my next sale to a future Next Big Thing wait. Intel is supposed to be producing a new crop of suped-up chips, and I'm thinking the GPU advances should really clear the decks of graphics-related beach balls.

Hmm, and we're getting closer to Snow Leopard. Maybe we're seeing a hardware delay to coincide with the new OS. Features unsupported by the old OS? Who knows.

For the record, Tom's graphics may have some artistic license in them, but they are excellent at communicating the numbers in a beautiful way even if they don't help you drive to the stores. I note that profit and units are present, but not gross receipts or gross receipts from CPU sales. There's plenty of room for a "sort of true" result to be found in "Apple has had a rare decline" claims, if the right metric is picked. A dollar-value year-over-year result for US-only November retail sales, for example, would be hard to question from the data at hand. On the other hand, Apple's retail strategy has been useful in increasing Apple's profile outside the US, too. (link steals shamelessly from Tom's site for its visual aid)
http://jadedconsumer.blogspot.com/2008/06/selling-apples-all-over-world.html
The upshot from the article: the more non-US iPhones are sold, the more valuable the platform will be due to localization strategy in Cocoa app development. This could really grow into something big

I got to earn my actual income though, so I won't be investigating this just now

Take care,
--Tex.