Notes from Apple's Q3 2006 webcast

categorized under I'll post good news about CREAF when I find it

Apple always finds some excuse to be conservative in forecasting future profits. Last time, it was delayed purchases for the Intel transition (which was still the case this last quarter with respect to their 'pro' line in anticipation of the new Core 2 Duo-based Mac Pros and the Adobe product suite's transition to Universal binaries that can be natively run on Intel Macs). This time, it's that we can't expect a repeat of the fantastic components market we had last quarter or past Tiger/iLife-driven sales.

But, great news overall. iPod sales were relatively flat, which was expected, but education (highest in 210 years against what was thought to be a shrinking market), back-to-school sales (free iPod nano with Mac purchase), and portable Mac sales (new Macbooks and Pros) were great. Interesting tidbits include:

• Ninety something percent growth in non-iPod music related revenue (accessories/made-for-iPod licensing program, iTunes (probably less so)
• Investing heavily in iPod and iTunes (maybe a quote, not sure), very confident in product pipeline.
• 50% of Mac buyers at retail stores are new to the platform (switchers). I stand corrected on my previous speculation.
• 12% of portables market share up from 6 according to someone (check webcast), in the course of just 6 months (Jan-June '06) (have to check this out later)
• Can't forget about the Apple employees selling Macs at Best Buy pilots started not too long ago.
• [Out there: Possibly working/collaborating on developing better music phones (although at this point, I can't imagine how this could be), saying that phones today don't make the best music players and soon later saying that they're not sitting around doing nothing (I'm not sure this isn't referencing their continued work with Motorola, but this was in response to a question about Sony Ericsson's succees with music phones elsewhere.]

SOURCE: [Apple Computer, Inc.] Conference Call Webcast