ChrisWhitmore
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Wall Street analysts weigh in on the iPad mini
Although Apple's stock fell sharply after the event yesterday -- it closed at around US$613 after opening the day at about $631 a share -- most Wall Street analysts are saying that the iPad mini will be a hit with consumers. The $329 starting price of the iPad mini was seen by Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank as a "modest disappointment," although he said that the features of the mini more than make up for the higher-than-expected price point. Many analysts, including Whitmore, believed Apple would offer a base model with only 8 GB of storage and were surprised by the starting capacity of 16 GB. Whitmore also feels that the build quality of the aluminum unibody iPad mini will also justify the $130 price premium over Android competitors such as the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD. The competing devices are made of plastic and glass. Deutsche Bank is maintaining its $850 price target for AAPL shares. Also chiming in was Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company, who thinks the new iPad mini will expand the overall market, and make life difficult for lower-priced competitors. To quote Wolf's comments about the competition, "none compare with this device, in our opinion, which is a full-featured iPad except for its size. All 275,000 iPad applications can run on it without modification." Needham's price target of $750 for AAPL remains the same. Sterne Agee's Shaw Wu had predicted a price point for the iPad mini between $299 and $349, so the $329 price tag fit his expectations. Wu was quoted as saying, "We continue to believe iPad mini is the competition's worst nightmare and likely to drive incremental volume." AppleInsider has a full rundown of analyst reactions to the littlest iPad. One parting comment from their post notes that "Maynard Um of Wells Fargo Securities believes that Apple arguably has its strongest product lineup in the company's history."
Piper Jaffray reports on Apple's impressive Black Friday sales (Updated)
As reported by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune's Apple 2.0 column, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster crunched his Black Friday sales numbers and found that Macs and iPads were popular gifts. Munster estimated the Apple store(s) he surveyed sold about 10.1 Macs per hour and 14.8 iPads per hour. This is a 23% increase in Mac sales and a 68% increase in iPad sales year over year. Munster also counted the foot traffic and found that retail store(s) in this survey averaged about 544 people per hour. The Piper Jaffray analyst and his team collected these numbers by standing in the retail store(s) and counting people and products as they left. Another report suggests the iPhone 4S sold equally well overseas. Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore polled local Apple stores and found that 75% had sold their entire inventory of the 4S on Black Friday. These stores were quickly replenished and, 30% of stores were sold out again the next day. Quarterly numbers won't be available until January, but these early reports suggest Apple is starting strong this holiday quarter. Updated the Piper Jaffray report section with the word store(s). Business Insider reports that Munster and his team surveyed "Apple stores", while Fortune said Munster was in a store.
Deutsche Bank says IT warms to iPhone
Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore says corporate IT is warming up to the iPhone. In a research note published yesterday das analyst says, "There is growing evidence that the iPhone is making inroads into the Enterprise." Whitmore thinks Apple will sell 2 million iPhones to big business by the end of the year, some through reimbursements to employees and some through IT department purchases. If those numbers hold, the iPhone will own about 7% of the Enterprise smartphone market in 2009, up from the 2% it controlled in 2008. What's up with the shift? Whitmore notes four reasons: User satisfaction - highlighted by the recent J.D. Power surveys of both consumer and business smartphone users Enterprise applications The iPhone's level of innovation The virtual keyboard - according to Whitmore, the thought that business users have to have a physical keyboard on a smartphone has turned out to be a 'fallacy.' However, businesspeople might not agree that they don't need a physical keyboard if their first virtual keyboard isn't on an iPhone. UK researcher Canalys has taken a look at touchscreens and future smartphone purchases. The firm finds the ground shifting the touchscreen's way. Of the 3,000 survey respondents in the UK, Germany, and France, 38% say their next phone will have a finger-oriented touchscreen, while 16% say theirs will have a stylus-operated touchscreen. But a lot of people who have virtual keyboard-only phones miss the physical keys. According to Canalys, 53% of people who own a touchscreen phone say they won't buy another one, though they may have bought the wrong one for them to start. A majority of iPhone and HTC users say they'll keep the virtual keys on their next phones, while less than a third of Sony Ericsson touchscreen phone owners say their next phone won't have buttons. [via Fortune, The Register]
