Mac
Munster: Apple’s Black Friday sales down from 2008
By Jim DalrympleNovember 30, 2009, 4:46 am PT
Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster, on Monday said his team’s checks of Mac sales on Black Friday show Apple was down from the same day in 2008.
According to Munster’s calculations, Apple was selling 8.3 Macs per hour in 2009, down from 13 per hour on Black Friday last year. Munster said his team spent nine hours in three Apple retail store locations. He did not say which stores were visited.
Even though the data for Mac sales is down for the biggest shopping day of the year, Munster said he is comfortable with his estimate of Apple selling between 2.8 million Macs in the current quarter.
Munster predicts that Mac unit growth for the quarter will be 11 percent to 15 percent year over year, which is down slightly from growth in the September quarter. The release of new Macs in October, however, could drive sales beyond the original estimate.
Please take a minute to Tweet, Like, or Share this post with your friends.
Share
Email This Post
⋅ 
Print This Post
⋅ Post a comment
Discussion
12 comments so far
12 Responses to “Munster: Apple’s Black Friday sales down from 2008”
Leave a Reply
Munster: Apple’s Black Friday sales down from 2008
By Jim DalrympleNovember 30, 2009, 4:46 am PT
Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster, on Monday said his team’s checks of Mac sales on Black Friday show Apple was down from the same day in 2008.
According to Munster’s calculations, Apple was selling 8.3 Macs per hour in 2009, down from 13 per hour on Black Friday last year. Munster said his team spent nine hours in three Apple retail store locations. He did not say which stores were visited.
Even though the data for Mac sales is down for the biggest shopping day of the year, Munster said he is comfortable with his estimate of Apple selling between 2.8 million Macs in the current quarter.
Munster predicts that Mac unit growth for the quarter will be 11 percent to 15 percent year over year, which is down slightly from growth in the September quarter. The release of new Macs in October, however, could drive sales beyond the original estimate.
Please take a minute to Tweet, Like, or Share this post with your friends.
Share
Email This Post
⋅ Print This Post
⋅ Post a comment
Discussion 12 comments so far
12 Responses to “Munster: Apple’s Black Friday sales down from 2008”
Leave a Reply
From what I could tell, the deals weren’t that great. My brother was in the market for a new Mac. He ended up getting a regular priced $999 MacBook. There were better deals to be had on Amazon, like the same MacBook for $884. Unfortunately, he waited in hopes Apple would give a bargain on the 13 inch MacBook. By that time, the $884 deal was gone.
Why in the world does anyone ever listen to analysts like Munster who are obviously clueless?
The guy visited 3 Apple stores for a couple of hours and sales at those 3 stores had decreased. BFD. For all we know, there was a major snow storm going on at those 3 stores.
Apple will sell between 2.5 and 3 million computers this quarter. They have a variety of channels – education, mail order, big box retailers, their own stores, and so on. The Apple Store is only one of the channels – and he picked just a couple of stores out of the entire Apple Store chain.
Bottom line is that this ‘observation’ isn’t representative of anything except Munster’s regular bashing of Apple without any knowledge.
Has anyone looked at his history? He has been posting these periodic “Apple’s business is failing” analyses for years – and it’s obvious in retrospect that his opinion is worthless. The fact that he’s using sales at 3 stores for a couple of hours to represent Apple’s business tells you why.
actually the implication is that they watched 3 stores for nine hours each.
but you are correct that it is flawed cause we don’t know what 3 stores. PJ has offices in New York, Boston etc. but also in Dallas and Des Moines. the locations would help to determine the statistical soundness of the sampling. Plus we don’t know whether they were watching money changing hands or machines leaving the stores. given that Apple has an instore data transfer service, some of the purchased machines might not have left until a day or two later. making the method an important point to consider.
Does Munster take into account that there are more Apple Retail stores to thin the traffic of individual stores. Supposedly there are a lot of European sales taking place. Did he send people over to Europe. Maybe more people are buying online or not even waiting for Black Friday deals. I purchased my iMac recently at the Apple site and had it shipped which is basically how I buy nearly everything.
I also think Munster’s approach to counting foot traffic is not sufficient enough to tell the whole story with any reliable accuracy.
It seems unlikely that Apple will do worse than last year when it comes to sales. From people I’ve been talking to there is a perception that the overall economy has improved since last year. Again, that’s just a very small sampling of people.
I don’t know about his methods (I hesitate to give him hits by going to the link and reading it
), but sales at the bookstore I work in were down this year, too. Oddly enough, compared to recent months, sales have picked up, so we’re in the position of being glad more people feel comfortable buying things but still anxious since sales are nowhere near what they were before the recession (both real and feared) hit our area. I’d be more interested to read how sales went throughout the computer industry as well as in other store types to get an idea about what people were spending their scarce cash on.
So let me get this straight. This is how analysts gather data? They lurk in a store basically counting boxes as they leave the place? Then they extrapolate this “data” to predict overall sales performance? And institutions and individuals actually use these predictions to decide whether or not to buy or sell Apple stock? Really?
Wow! Just WOW! I had no idea. So when I retire and hire Morgan Stanley, or Merrill Lynch, or whoever to manage my retirement fund they will be making investment decisions for me based on stuff like this? OMFG!
So these nitwits calculate the gross sales of Apple Stores by sending 3 goons to “check out” the pulse and hubbub of three Apple Store sales on a given Black Friday?
How in the hell is that even remotely scientific, statistically accurate, or credible?
if the stores they went to are anything like my local one, anyone in the store for more than 30 minutes or so is encouraged to leave (in case they are spotting for shoplifting or for mugging folks). same with my mall for those lurking around outside the Apple store.
so I wonder how many computers they missed when they had to change up faces to avoid security.
Obviously there are problems with the ‘convenience sample’ that Muster is using here.
I can understand trying to estimate sales, but you would think that any rational person could simply look at the products and services and know that this is a great company. They are responsible for about 99% of all innovation in the computer business, which has been the case since the 70′s.
I’ll give them some effort for trying. It does seem like a weak effort. For those who think this is a bad way to collect data it is done this way because that is often the only information you have, imperfect though it may be. This happens in almost all industries. In the oil business you count the number of tankers moving the oil or the number left for hire. In other industries you count the numbers of cardboard boxes sold as an economic indicator. Apple doesn’t publish sales statistics except on a quarterly basis. The only way to know what is being sold is to try to count what gets sold.
it was a very weak effort. 3 out of 220 stores just in the US is not a strong sample.
And yet Munster tries to play it like he’s got decent numbers. And some folks will look at his numbers without asking questions and that can muck with stock values and such.
“it was a very weak effort. 3 out of 220 stores just in the US is not a strong sample.”
It’s even worse than that. It’s 3 of 220 of the Apple Stores – and only for a very short period of time. But then add in all the other distribution channels – education, corporate, mail order, catalog houses, big ticket retailers and you’re not even scratching the surface.
Interestingly, Munster reversed himself a bit later and said Apple’s computer sales were strong on Black Friday. I guess he couldn’t even convince himself.