Analysts see big Apple sales so far
Posted
Dec 01 2008, 11:56 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Apple slashed some prices for Black Friday, but not any more drastically than it has in the past. Yet another sign that the company thinks it's going to cruise through the holiday season.
And Apple has good reason to be confident. Analysts are pessimistic about retail sales in general, but note that Apple's seeing great sales so far -- the iPod Touch was even out of stock at Amazon, which normally has enough iPods on hand to fill a football stadium.
That's causing optimism to bubble that even in this dour shopping climate, Apple, at least, is going to have a solid holiday quarter. A Kaufman Bros. analyst checked with distributors and stores and found that Apple had strong Black Friday foot traffic. Another analyst did the same thing and thinks sales were even up slightly from last year.
Analysts seem to be sticking with projections that sales could hit $10 billion this quarter, which would be slightly better than last year's holiday period (Apple has given a range of $9 billion to $10 billion). Despite the good news, Apple shares are dragging in the overall gloomy market Monday, falling 3% to $90.21.
Which computer maker will have a tough holiday? Probably Dell. Analysts checking in with Best Buy stores found that none of the sales staff there were recommending Dell computers. And Dell is still struggling to get a good foothold in retail stores, after years of a go-it-alone sales strategy.
Shoppers favor Hewlett-Packard computers over Dell by a five-to-one margin, according to an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners.
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