Apple's rare earnings miss yesterday, driven by a falloff in iPhone sales, dinged the stock and led Wall Street analysts to reassess their expectations and financial models for Apple's current quarter.
The situation is an odd sort of problem. Sure, iPhone sales dipped in the latest quarter -- selling 26 million versus expectations of 29 million -- but the company stressed that its fan-base is simplyputting off buying new products until the new version (read: the iPhone 5) comes out.
And that -- along with many other product upgrades -- leads us to look ahead not to the current quarter, but to the holiday quarter (Apple's Q1). But first, let's review the fact that the current quarter falls during a peculiar chunk of time, which may make it a bit of a snoozer.
If last year's product cycle was any indication, the company's fourth quarter -- which runs through September -- could be especially light in product announcements. During that three-month stretch last year, Apple rolled out OS X Lion and updated a number of its Macs with speedier processors and Thunderbolt I/O technology. But that was it.
In the quarter we're in right now -- Apple's fourth -- the company is pulling the same trick with the release of OS X Mountain Lion, which went out today. Though what's arguably the most important part of the company's Mac lineup -- its portables -- got their big update last month, with new versions of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
For this quarter, Apple has projected sales of $34 billion and earnings per share of $7.65. That would be a 20 percent jump in revenue from the year-earlier period, but until yesterday Wall Street had been looking for Apple to post sales of $38 billion and to earn $10.22 a share. Those estimates are already changing.
A bit of a silver lining for Apple: the iPad, which has very quickly begun to pick up some of the slack. Apple sold 17 million iPads during the quarter that just wrapped up, and could post a bigger tally in the next quarter if last year's growth was any indication. More importantly, Apple has chosen spring as the time to launch new iPad models, which has helped fill out these lagging quarters where sales get hurt by those holding off on buying iPhones.
Something that is expected to bolster Apple's iPad sales during the quarter is the company's cheaper model, the $399 iPad 2, which Apple yesterday described as a boon to its sales. Apple could also roll out updates to Macs that didn't get attention in the company's hardware update last month. That includes the iMac and the Mac Mini, which are both overdue for updates.
No comments:
Post a Comment