“On Wednesday, October 18, 2006 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET, Apple Computer will announce its Q4 (fourth quarter) 2006 and Fiscal Year 2006 earnings. The company will also conduct a Conference Call with analysts. This post is a preview into the earning report as prior quarter reports and events of 2006 are analyzed. The focus of this post is Mac unit sales,” Switch To A Mac reports.
“Q4 2006 will mark the eight straight quarter of at least 1 million Mac unit sales dating back to Q1 2005,” Switch To A Mac writes. “For an understanding of Apple’s earning report, we need to review how Apple’s fiscal quarters are divided.”
Apple does not use a calendar year for it’s fiscal year rather, Apple’s fiscal year runs as follows:
• First Quarter (Q1) – October, November, December
• Second Quarter (Q2) – January, Febuary, March
• Third Quarter (Q3) – April, May, June
• Fourth Quarter (Q4) – July, August, September
“I expect Mac unit sales to trump analyst and Wall Street expectations. Taking the above discussion and my previous analysis of Apple market share increases into consideration, I conclude that Apple at least maintained a 16 percent increase in Mac unit sales between the fourth and third quarters. I fully expect that Apple most likely saw somewhere close to a 20 percent increase in Mac unit sales as the Mac is rapidly becoming a popular and viable choice for today’s computer buyer. As a result, I expect that Apple would have shipped close to if not 1 million portables, and upwards of 640,000 desktops equating to a total of 1.64 million Macs during the fourth quarter,” Switch To A Mac writes.
Full article, with much more, including charts, here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Investrend expects Apple to report earnings of $6.72 billion – October 10, 2006
Analyst predicts Apple to sell 1.4 million Macs this quarter – October 09, 2006
Apple to announce Q4 earnings October 18th – October 03, 2006
Rocck & Roll Apple
Not really surprising. If you read the Tipping Point, it’s not hard to see what is happening here.
oh were it true…but I am skeptical that Switch to a Mac got the numbers correct.
Still, there is a reasonable chance Apple shipped 1M portables and that is very cool!
I would expect possibly bigger numbers for desktops since the Mac Pro has come out and there was no doubt a pent up demand for the machines, possibly that demand will spill over to the next quarter and the full effects will be seen then but I think it will be a big increase regardless.
I really believe that 1.5M is a much more reasonable number and it would still be a spectacular number compared to the 850,000 units Apple used to sell each quarter.
This would mean a 50% market growth over the last couple of years and great news for developers who can now expect bigger returns for their investments.
1.5M Macs would be fantastic. 1.64M seems a bit unrealistic.
But of course some Uber-intellignet, flawless, stock/industry analysist will say this was not enough and Mac’s are birus free because nobody buys them.
Wasn’t that long ago that Apple wasnt even selling a million Macs per quarter.
For anyone who thinks that Apple’s strategy isn’t working or that the iPod halo effect is a myth might want to rethink their position.
Neil,
I beg to differ.
In several posts I’ve predicted 1.6 million ( with a possible 1.7 million) for the September quarter.
Anyway, we’ll know in eight days.
I still think there is a chance of close to a million desktop’s as well. I personally know 5 people that have bought desktop macs this past quarter, and I don’t know that many people but I think that number will be the surprise.
Oh — I thought Apple was selling 1.6 million Macs for <bold>a</bold> quarter!! I thought – wow what a deal!
My bad.
I think the Macs will fly out the door when Adobe finally goes universal. I know that’s what I’m waiting on.
I really hope this turns out to be true. If Apple sold 1.5 million Mac last quarter, I would be very happy. The day is not far away when Apple will be selling 8 million Macs a year. I think that is when the floodgates will truly open because there is a lot of word of mouth that results from selling that many computers a year. Heck, we are seeing some of that now.
But if Apple does hit 1.6 milion Macs this quarter….$100 AAPL, here we come!
MW: “run” as in AAPL will go on a big, long-term run if this report turn out to be true!
There will also be a true video iPod announcement on that same event.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/10/apple-about-to-announce-wireless-video-ipod/
ONE BILLION MACS SERVED!
Mikko,
Where did you get that any announcement is scheduled for that event? The Engadget link is nothing more than “soon” a new iPod will be announced.