Apple forecast: 12% Mac sales growth quarter to quarter
Apple will sell 2.5 million Macs in the second calendar quarter, a 12 percent increase and a marked uptick from the 4 percent decline last quarter, according to a new forecast issued by Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty.
According to her note to clients, explained in a report by Apple 2.0 columnist Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Huberty believes Apple has the "most upside" in terms of stabilization among its peers after the poor-performing first quarter of 2009:
“Even before the new Macbook Pros launched, Apple began to outperform the broader commercial PC segment — with commercial Mac shipments up 25% [month over month] in May versus market growth of just 1%.”
NPD weekly shipment data shows steady acceleration of Mac shipments over the past few weeks, which has been noticed by suppliers, she wrote.
Given the data, Huberty wrote that she is raising her forecast for Mac sales in the second calendar quarter (Apple’s fiscal Q3) to 2.5 million units, up from 2.4 million, which Elmer-DeWitt notes would represent 12 percent quarter to quarter growth, less than Apple’s 14 percent average during the past three years but far better than the decline last quarter.
More insight is available from AppleInsider, which notes that Apple's back-to-school promotion (buy a new Mac, get a free iPod touch) and price cuts to the latest crop of Macbooks helped spark the growth.
To be sure, Apple's not the only one on the rebound. Huberty reportedly increased her shipment forecast for Dell and HP.