Analysts Have No Idea How Many Macs Apple Shipped Last Quarter

[chucker23n1]

It's plausible if Apple fixed the supply chain for Macs in Q3 which allowed it to satisfy pent-up demand.

Apple beats on revenue and profit, expects growth to accelerate despite 'pockets of softness'

Apple reported earnings on Thursday for its fiscal third quarter ending in June.

www.cnbc.com

Maybe. We'll see in a few weeks what the Mac revenue numbers say…

 

[senttoschool]

Maybe. We'll see in a few weeks what the Mac revenue numbers say…

No ****.

 

[rp2011]

None of us know for sure, but it looks like Gartner's "estimates" are merely applying the 15% drop in sales figure to match what is happening with the industry as a whole. Also worth noting is that Gartner includes Chromebooks as PC's and not iPads. That alone is telling and paints a much harsher light on the PC market.

Meanwhile, if IDC's figures are close, Apple is nippling at both Dell and HP's heels. It will be particularly amusing if Apple overtakes Dell given its founders advice to Apple lol.

And let's be clear, Apple has always been the underdog. With smaller marketshare, and many times carving itself the more difficult path, it still beats out incumbents even with higher asking prices and not just knockoffs. Which makes naysayers and those (especially clueless politicians) accusing Apple of monopolistic practices look like fools.

 

[orbital~debris]

Wait, I thought analysts were on this like:

 

[TheOldChevy]

Maybe to you but as an investor, I want more information not less, that said though, the analyst estimates are probably a solid gauge, maybe there is a nugget in that recent Tripp Mickle book that explains some inside sourcing as to why Apple went in a more secretive direction.

The thing is that most people are not investors. They just have money and they what it to multiply without spending too much time/work on it, therefore they use the stock market like a big casino that they expect will return more than they spend.

Real investors spend their full time investigating a limited number of companies, they invest a level of money that is significant for the company, and they understand what the company is doing and the risks that the company is taking.

 

[mech986]

As an investor it still bugs me when a company doesn’t report sales data.
Big picture numbers are fine, but it makes fraud harder to detect when real numbers aren’t released.
Blending products into larger categories makes it hard to determine poor performing SKUs.
Yes, they make money hand over fist, but that still doesn’t justify the smoke and mirror routine.

Apple plays the long game, introduces products and services that add and accumulate revenue to the overall goal. If Apple has to focus on everyone complaining that this product doesn’t sell, that service didn’t make money, etc., Apple would never get anything done or they’d be cancelling products and services left and right (see Google / Alphabet and Facebook)

Example: Apple Pay, intro two years after Google Wallet/NFC payments, yet over past 6 years has become the #1 contactless payment system in developed countries. Adds to Services. Apple Watch - derided as fashion accessory, looks bad, too expensive, yet Apple kept adding features, improving it, strong health and fitness features plus iPhone and Health integration, now best selling smartwatch line for past 5 years running, sells more revenue than entire Swiss Watch industry. And Apple Watch Ultra, already accepted and selling well out of the gate. Samsung Watch 5 Pro or Golf editions, did you hear about that one, and is there a market for a $500 Android smartwatch?

When OG HomePod didn’t sell well, Apple discontinued it and replaced with HomePod Mini which was better engineered and cheaper, the market spoke and Apple listened and adjusted. AirTags disrupted the tracker industry. AirPods Pro defined the wireless earbuds industry and is the best seller by revenue and not needing to disclose unit number sales. Apple TV+ is a growing service that enhances the entire Apple ecosystem.

As long as an Apple product or services adds value to Apple users and keeps them loyal and happy, unit sales are secondary if they are reasonably popular.

Too bad a publicly traded company doesn’t reveal to its investors how many units its businesses move each quarter.

Do you ask Walmart or Costco how many ribeyes, Cokes, or clothes they sell? Why Costco still sells $1.50 hot dogs and drinks and $4.99 roast chickens, and gas cheaper than anyone? In financial reports, unit sales are not required, it’s optional data. As such, most all companies report the overall financial numbers and the sales data is proprietary and optional. Investors have no say on what sells well or not as they are not management, so you’ll just have to trust that management of your favorite company is in the hands of people who know what they’re doing.

Apple always boosts of being most popular computer sales, but when you look at the breakdown of marketshare Apple is only 10% of computer market. iPhone is another story iPhone is big, but the Android market is multiple big companies. There is no way Apple doesn't know what it's number. My guess is they tell different story of where Apple make their money versus what they want the public the think. Also Apple still has the Steve Jobs obsession will profit margins being all that matters probably a lot of customers would get upset if they saw the cost to manufacture and what Apple sells their products for.

Of course Apple knows it’s numbers. That’s how they determine total segment revenue, margins, and profits.

Apple doesn’t claim most popular computer, just best performance in a number of areas plus design and “value” that appeals to its target users and new users. Let’s average the IDC and Gartner numbers to 5.8+10.06M units = 15.86/2 = 7.9M units, about 11% marketshare of 71M total units. We know Macs are more expensive at average selling price is $1350. Total revenue would be then $10.7B, pretty close to FY 2021 Q1 Mac revenue.

Now non-Apple PC’s sell for much less, about $630/unit. Take all the rest of PC sales (71M - Macs 7.1M) = 63.9M units X $630 = $40.3B in PC revenue, total computer revenue = $51B.

So Apple Macs, with just 11% of PC unit marketshare takes 10.7/51 = 21% of all PC revenues. $1 for every $5. Lenovo is the biggest with 17M units sold, ~24% marketshare, yet at $630/unit, makes only $10.7B in revenue, same as Apple’s Mac revenue!! Sells more than 2x to make same revenue and I guarantee you Apple’s gross margin is much higher than Lenovo’s.

As for iPhone, same scenario. Apple sold ~237M iPhone 13 and others in 2021-22 FY Sept-Sept. at roughly $825 ASP. Will be ~ $196+B, a slight improvement on 2021’s iPhone 12 revenue of $192B, but good for this very rough 2022 year. Total smartphone market thought to have dropped to 1.3B. Take Apple out and you have 1063m units, all Android. Given Samsung + other Android ASP is only ~$275 (lots and lots of sub-$250 phones sold by price only), that gives Android smartphone revenue of $292B

Total smartphone revenue = $488B. Apple take $196B/488B = 40% of all smartphone revenue. Given Apple iPhone margin is about 36% and Samsung Smartphone margin is only (2.62T KRW/28.0T KRW) or 9.4%, you can see Apple takes almost 80% of all smartphone profits, Samsung gets just under 20%, and everyone else fights for the leftovers or actually loses money (Sony, Nokia/HMD, LG, HTC, Motorola). These numbers are consistent with AppleInsider and Counterpoint Research Report of Sept. 29, 2022.

As for profit margins, every company builds or makes products as inexpensively as their quality standards allow, but sells them at whatever price they can get for their product. An overpriced product for perceived value won’t sell, and an underpriced product for value perceived will sell like crazy. Apparently given the iPhone’s relative demand, iPhones are not overpriced. Since Android sales have dropped, apparently some Android segments aren’t selling well, mainly the midrange phones and some flagships. That’s why Apple can maintain good solid margins while Android don’t make much profit margin on their smartphones in general.

 

[darngooddesign]

Thoughts and prayers for the poor analysts.

 

[PsykX]

It shouldn't be too hard to estimate it though.

1. The last time Apple reported them, should be the baseline - day 0.
2. There are metrics on the Internet giving macOS market share. You start with day 0 until now. PC growth is known so you can guess the macOS growth out of this.
3. They do report Mac Profit every quarter, so you compare the profit now with day 0.

The only problems at this point is :
- You can assume they make more profit with Apple Silicon than with Intel chips.
- You have to assume the breakdown of sold models is similar to what it was when Apple reported the numbers.

 

[SnappleRumors]

Maybe to you but as an investor,

As an investor it still bugs me when a company doesn’t report sales data.

As investors you are in the same boat as the rest of us shareholders. Those without the stomach shouldn’t be in this space.

 

[MacGizmo]

...how does a publicly traded company get away with this?

By law, publicly traded companies are required to divulge their EARNINGS, but it says nothing about reporting dollar-for-dollar HOW they earned it (which products made how much).

 

[chucker23n1]

It shouldn't be too hard to estimate it though.

It is.

1. The last time Apple reported them, should be the baseline - day 0.
2. There are metrics on the Internet giving macOS market share. You start with day 0 until now. PC growth is known so you can guess the macOS growth out of this.

You can look at something like "how many browsers identified as running on a Mac", but that's an imperfect measure. Fr example, it'll overcount systems that aren't used in restrictive enterprise environments where measurements can't take place.

(It's also, strictly speaking, not the same thing. It measures current usage from which you can extrapolate install base, whereas market share measures sales within a certain time interval, from which you cannot extrapolate install base at all.)

3. They do report Mac Profit every quarter, so you compare the profit now with day 0.

The only problems at this point is :
- You can assume they make more profit with Apple Silicon than with Intel chips.
- You have to assume the breakdown of sold models is similar to what it was when Apple reported the numbers.

Yeah, but those are huge problems. You're comparing different products with different prices, different component costs, etc.

 

[Mojohanna32]

As an investor it still bugs me when a company doesn’t report sales data.
Big picture numbers are fine, but it makes fraud harder to detect when real numbers aren’t released.
Blending products into larger categories makes it hard to determine poor performing SKUs.
Yes, they make money hand over fist, but that still doesn’t justify the smoke and mirror routine.

but if they don't lump things together, OCD people get fixated on minute drops in unit sales numbers for air pod max, for example. You can't lump some and not others.
What's more important, the unit volume of X sold, or the management of the product via selling price and cost inputs, to drive revenue and profits? As the market matured, it became much harder to show YOY unit growth. But overall category growth is good assuming you are comparing like numbers YOY (meaning you arent inflating with "new" stuff in the category that isn't normalized).

 

[wanha]

A rumor site criticizes analyst estimates for being inaccurate 🤡

(I'll give you that the analyst estimates are inaccurate. But with no public data out there, is there an easy way to solve this?)

 

[iamgalt]

If 87% of all teenagers* own iPhone, Mac ownership must be well north of 100%. 🤪

Even the plants and insects are probably buying them. Could someone survey the invertebrates?

*surveyed

The survey consisted of over 14,000 teenagers. If you've ever studied statistics in high school, you'll know that's a huge sample size and will give very accurate results. A sample size of 2,000 would give very accurate results. You don't need the asterisk after teenagers. You can just say 87% of teenagers.

 

[jrath1]

I'm guessing more than one.

 

[Unami]

Out of curiosity, how do they estimate the figures?

The usual, I guess. They‘ll have contacts to resellers and know how much those resellers sold when apple still reported numbers.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The survey consisted of over 14,000 teenagers. If you've ever studied statistics in high school, you'll know that's a huge sample size and will give very accurate results. A sample size of 2,000 would give very accurate results. You don't need the asterisk after teenagers. You can just say 87% of teenagers.

I'm an Apple everything guy but I'm thoroughly skeptical about that number. My household is Apple everything, so if I did a survey of everyone at my house, the number becomes 100% of phones, tablets and computers. If I then extrapolate my "survey" results to the world, apparently Apple rules all. Is it 14K randomly-selected teenagers or 14K teenagers from Apple households (like mine, where 100% of teenagers are Apple everything)?

However, let's take it as truth as seemingly everyone in this thread did without our usual rampant skepticism when Apple is ranked 2nd or lower in any other measure. If pretty much all teenagers have iPhone, that market is saturated. If pretty much all teenagers have iPhone because they are hand-me-downs from their parents, that (parent) market is saturated. So if all teenagers and adults have iPhone, shall we assume new iPhone sales will thoroughly tank this year?

It doesn't seem logical that we can have it both ways: celebrating near total dominance of a market AND expecting that market to buy-buy-buy at record levels if they already have the product. In countless threads, we have expectations of another year of record iPhone unit sales. In this one, we seem to be buying that just about everyone has iPhone. Which is it?

Yes, of course, there will be some upgrades by the first link in that hand-me-down chain... but we expect record volume. Assume parents have one from the last year or two and teenager has their old one that is 2 or 3+ years old, who buys record numbers of iPhone this year? Next?

Update: I did a little digging on this topic. I encourage anyone blindly believing it to do searches for market share android phones vs. iPhone and clicking into link after link. In general, there is either a massive conspiracy of lying from many reputable market research players to hide this incredible Apple accomplishment or something is missing from THIS claim. Broadly (not including only teenagers), it appears that Android phones own 7X-8X% of the market depending on which you check... and that is trending upwards. The contest that Apple wins is owning the bulk of the PROFITS in the smart phone market.

So I did a little more digging about THIS claim and found a key detail missing: the measure was for premium phones that cost more than $1000. Well duh! One of the great attractions to Android phones is that they cost less-to-a-lot-less than iPhones... something likely to appeal to much more than 13% of teenagers who buy their own and/or cash-strapped parents not able to afford a premium phone that costs $1000+ for their teenagers. If we survey only rich households, their possessions will not be very representative of ALL Americans.

In a related story, Apple Watch has ZERO PERCENT share of the premium watch market priced above $2000. So apparently no one buys Apple Watch: 0% market share.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Is it 14K randomly-selected teenagers or 14K teenagers from Apple households (like mine, where 100% of teenagers are Apple everything)?

Neither random nor Apple households would yield accurate results. They likely surveyed a “representative sample” of 14K teenagers. While it’s hard to build a representative sample, once they have it, they can surmise a lot about the population being studied without having to survey millions upon millions.

Because we can't have it both ways: celebrating near total dominance of a market AND expecting that market to buy-buy-buy at record levels if they already have the product. In countless threads, we have expectations of another year of record iPhone unit sales. In this one, we seem to be buying that just about everyone has iPhone. Which is it?

Luckily for Apple there’s a few million NEW teenagers every year. And, many of today’s pre-teens that already own iPhones will just add to the percentage of teens that own iPhones in future surveys.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

Nobody hides good sales news on purpose. Just saying.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Neither random nor Apple households would yield accurate results. They likely surveyed a “representative sample” of 14K teenagers. While it’s hard to build a representative sample, once they have it, they can surmise a lot about the population being studied without having to survey millions upon millions.

I thoroughly understand how statistics work. That's contributing to my skepticism that the 87% number is real. I've since discovered why- a qualifier left out of the original thread: "phones that cost more than $1000." With that qualifier, I'll buy 87% because the majority of phones purchased don't cost so much (average price for a smartphone purchased in America is about $500 in 2022). I instinctually knew it had to be something like that.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

The consensus is that Apple is sitting on $200 billion in cash, I don't know where you are getting your numbers, investors have complained for years that they were sitting on too much cash, Carl Icahn was able to convince or some say give Tim Cook license from the board to issue stock buybacks, again, bankruptcy, they might be sitting on more cash than any company in the world, is this a joke?

And the example you cite, Enron, is one huge reason why Apple would not want to cheat on their numbers.

So I originally pulled the numbers off of Yahoo Finance since I know how they lay out the numbers and it’s consistent for every company, but I went ahead and double checked against Apple’s latest 10-Q off their own Investor Relations page.

It agrees with Yahoo’s numbers.

The CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS shows that Apple currently has $27B, down from $35B nine months prior.

It also shows Accounts Payable is $48B vs Accounts Receivable of $22B.

The only reason Apple can afford to give dividends as generously as they do is because they keep taking on so much debt.

I suppose the consequences of reducing dividends are minimal, so Apple can just do that to avoid having fiscal issues.

 

[I7guy]

So I originally pulled the numbers off of Yahoo Finance since I know how they lay out the numbers and it’s consistent for every company, but I went ahead and double checked against Apple’s latest 10-Q off their own Investor Relations page.

It agrees with Yahoo’s numbers.

The CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS shows that Apple currently has $27B, down from $35B nine months prior.

It also shows Accounts Payable is $48B vs Accounts Receivable of $22B.

The only reason Apple can afford to give dividends as generously as they do is because they keep taking on so much debt.

I suppose the consequences of reducing dividends are minimal, so Apple can just do that to avoid having fiscal issues.

Guess there is a difference in what cash actually means.

13 Firms Hoard $1 Trillion In Cash (We're Looking At You Big Tech)

Cash is piling up fast on S&P 500 companies' books — and investors want their share.

www.investors.com

 

[JPack]

To the best of my knowledge, they are not registered investment advisors, do not hold Series 7 SEC licenses are not held to the same legal standards, regardless of how they market themselves. They do not sell, market or deal in securities. They sell research and that is exactly what their website and materials say. It’s a very fine line and they are very sure not to cross it.

Point is, Ming-Chi Kuo doesn’t have to jump to another investment firm. Kuo is a journalist that started his career with Digitimes.

His most important asset is his knowledge. He can be recruited by IDC, Gartner, or any other firm.

 

[TheOldChevy]

Nobody hides good sales news on purpose. Just saying.

I know many businesses that do not disclose their sales figures, including some of the most valuable companies (when was the last time you saw Rolex announcing their sales numbers, just as an example ?).

 

[sunman42]

What even is some of you guys’ argument? “They could be lying about cash on hand, but they obviously couldn’t lie about units sold”? If they’re cooking the books, as you suggest, why only cook some of the books?

Is that meant as a pun? (jk)