Monday, April 30, 2007

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL): Mac market share up in Q1'07

- Piper Jaffray comments on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) saying IDC data indicated Mac market share was 2.6% in calendar Q1'07. This is up q/q from 2.5% in Q4'06, and up y/y from 2.1% in Q1'06. Strong Mac sales of 1.52m in the quarter drove market share gains which would have been even stronger if not for Vista's Jan. 30 launch, which negatively impact Mac market share. They expect Y/Y Mac market share gains to continue through FY07.

Due to Vista's Jan. 30 release and the PC sales that resulted from pent-up demand after its lengthy delay, the firm expected a slight sequential downtick in Mac market share. But strong Mac sales in Apple's March quarter enabled the company to gain share despite stronger than normal PC sales. With Apple heading into 3 quarters of significant product releases (iPhone, Leopard, new iPod) and the education buying season, they expect Y/Y market share gains to continue.

In over two years, the only quarter in which Macs saw a y/y market share decline was calendar Q1'06, during the heart of the Intel transition. Apple announced the transition to Intel processors in June 2005, but did not ship the first Intel Macs until late January of 2005. And only the final quarter of the period between the announcement and the products shipping, calendar Q1'06, saw a y/y decline in Mac market share. Since coming out of the Intel transition Mac market share has seen y/y increases, and y/y unit sales growth of about 30%, which have been about 3x the industry average of about 10%.

Maintains Outperform and $140 tgt.

Notablecalls: Not actionable but good to know category. Wake me up when they cross the 3% level. Or better not.

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