Apple

The newest addition to the iPod lineup may have slightly boosted overall sales numbers for April.

(Credit: Apple)

Just like February, April was a gloomy month for Apple retail sales of Macs and iPods, according to data gathered by the NPD Group.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster analyzed the monthly data from NPD's April roundup of Apple sales. He said in a research note Monday that April Mac sales were down 1.8 percent from a year ago. Assuming similar patterns for May and June, that should lead to total quarterly sales of 2.1 million to 2.3 million Macs, which would be an 8 percent to 16 percent decline in unit growth, he writes. If that does happen, it would represent the second quarter in a row of falling Mac shipments. Munster puts a positive spin on it, saying that the drop in sales was not as bad as expected given the current shape of the economy. Plus, Apple's situation appears rosy compared to its PC brethren, whose growth collectively was negative 7 percent in the most recent quarter.

It also appears iPod growth is headed downhill. Munster points to 9 percent declines in iPod sales in April, which puts the business on track for 9.5 million to 10.5 million units for the quarter, or anywhere from a 5 percent to 14 percent dip. That's despite the introduction of the updated iPod Shuffle, introduced in March.

Declining Mac and iPod sales amid Apple's continual overall solid performance only serve to underscore the importance of the iPhone to the company's bottom line.

Apple has been something of a golden child among makers of computers and consumer electronics. But now it, too, is showing at least a hint that the good times can't last forever.

In November, says market researcher NPD Group, sales of the company's Mac products slipped 1 percent from the same month a year ago, even as industrywide PC sales were up 2 percent, according to a report in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.

The 24-inch Apple iMac.

Apple has been the pacesetter amid overall PC sales for some time. And it does continue to hold those honors, at least in laptop sales during November, the Journal reported. But NPD's numbers showed the company taking a serious hit with its desktop Macs, sales of which fell 35 percent.

Early reports from Black Friday, the traditional sales bump right after Thanksgiving, had indicated that Apple did relatively well--in part because of modest discounts--even among consumer worries about tough economic conditions.

Pricing of Macs versus other computers were likely a key factor in the November decline seen by NPD. The Journal cites Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, and others on "price sensitivity" among consumers:

Apple rivals like (Hewlett-Packard) and Dell offered discounts weeks earlier than usual this holiday season, dropping some prices by as much as 50 percent. Mr. Munster said since last December, the average Windows PC price is down 35 percent to 45 percent; in contrast, Apple has offered only modest discounts of 5 percent to 10 percent on its PCs, analysts said.

Still, the analysts cited seemed generally upbeat about Apple's sales prospects overall.

The iTunes Store is still the top destination for U.S. music shoppers, according to new data.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple is still the No. 1 music retailer in the United States, but Amazon.com's online store is coming on strong.

More U.S. music buyers are getting their music fix through iTunes than from any other source, according to data released on Tuesday by NPD Group. Earlier this year, Apple took over the top spot from Wal-Mart Stores, and it maintained that lead during the six months from January to June, NPD said.

Wal-Mart is still in second place, followed by Best Buy. Taking fourth place from Target was Amazon, whose own music store has been growing in popularity since it launched last September, perhaps in part due to its DRM-free stance.

Notebooks like the MacBook Pro, which starts at $1,999, are helping Apple dominate the $1,000-and-up market.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's doing well in the high-rent district of the computer industry, according to NPD.

On Friday eWeek published some data confirmed by NPD that reveals Apple now owns 66 percent of the U.S. retail market for personal computers that cost more than $1,000. Its percentage of the U.S. retail market in general is 14 percent, according to NPD.

Apple only sells one Mac below $1,000--the Mac mini--so it's not all that surprising that it would do well in that category, given the momentum behind Mac sales over the past year. By contrast, the single largest category of notebooks available at Best Buy--when sorted by price--falls between $700 and $899. And two-thirds of the desktops on the site are priced below $1,000.

These numbers don't include an awful lot of sales--such as corporate PCs that account for about half the market, and online-heavy sellers such as Dell--but tend to illustrate trends in the U.S. PC market over time. Apple only had about 18 percent of the same category in January 2006, according to Fortune. That was the same month Apple introduced its first Intel-based Mac.

This is a profitable category, however, that all PC companies covet. Those PC companies may be reaching corporate customers at those price points, but Apple is dominating the consumer half of the high end.

Apple has confirmed data leaked from an internal memo showing that it has become the largest music retailer in the U.S.

The iTunes Music Store is now the leading music retailer in the U.S.

(Credit: Apple)

Earlier Thursday, Ars Technica reported that certain Apple employees had received an internal e-mail with the results of a study conducted by The NPD Group. NPD initially declined to comment on the data, citing the fact that it was leaked from Apple, but Apple distributed a press release Thursday afternoon confirming the data from NPD's MusicWatch survey.

Apple didn't include its market share in the release, but Ars reported that Apple had 19 percent of overall music sales in the U.S. during January, compared with Wal-Mart's 16 percent. Apple did say that its achievement was based on two months of data, from sales in January and February of this year.

One interesting note about NPD's MusicWatch survey is that it equates 12 tracks with the sale of one CD. iTunes generates a lot of one- or two-track purchases as compared with the purveyors of physical CDs, where you either buy the whole thing or you don't. All those 99-cent transactions apparently add up.

Mac shipments were up dramatically in the fourth quarter of last year, and if recent NPD data is any indication, Apple's doing pretty well again this quarter.

AppleInsider spotted a research note from Pacific Crest Securities citing NPD Group data that Apple's Mac shipments grew 60 percent in February compared with the same period last year, while the entire market grew just 9 percent. NPD's data tracks computer purchases made at U.S. retail stores, which means it excludes much of Dell and all online purchases in general, but it does serve as a weather vane for the PC industry.

Shipments of Macs, like this new MacBook Pro, were up 60 percent in February, according to NPD.

(Credit: Apple)

Notebooks were the primary source of Apple's strength, according to the data, with shipments up 64 percent compared with a 20 percent gain for the overall market. But the difference between Apple's desktop shipments and the industry is stark: iMac and Mac Pro shipments were up 55 percent compared with last year, while industry desktop shipments declined 5 percent.

Amid all the economic concern of the past few months, this is good news for Apple, as strong Mac growth might be enough to offset worries about the iPod division. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray issued a note Monday that Apple's iPod shipments are tracking below expectations right now, meaning if the trends hold Apple would see a year-on-year decline in iPod shipments for the first time in an awfully long time. Munster thinks the iPod Shuffle price cut will have stimulated demand by the time the final numbers are out, but that situation bears watching.

Mac sales grew by 44 percent in the fourth quarter, Apple reported in January. February marked the first full month of availability for the MacBook Air, and Apple added new chips and new trackpad features to the MacBook Pro and MacBook in late February.

It's a good thing the music industry has Mac users, according to The NPD Group.

That's because according to a survey conducted by the market research firm, Mac users are more likely to pay to download music--and buy CDs--than Windows users. "There's still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that's especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music," said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with NPD, in a press release.

The guy on the left doesn't seem to like music as much as the guy on the right, according to NPD.

(Credit: Apple)

The data says that 50 percent of all Mac users surveyed by NPD purchased at least one song during the third quarter, while only 16 percent of Windows users purchased a song from an online music store. And 32 percent of Mac users bought a CD during that same time, while just 28 percent of Windows users did so.

NPD says this means Mac users are "more active" when it comes to digital music than their PC counterparts. It also says that the data "helps debunk the myth that digital music consumers stop buying music in CD format."

So, what conclusion should we draw, then? Mac users are more honest than piracy-loving Windows users? Mac users are more satisfied with the current craptacular state of popular music than Windows users? NPD has a vested interest in keeping one of its clients happy with press releases such as this one, which basically reinforces Apple's branding as the computer company for cool creative people?

The whole "Mac users are younger/smarter/richer/better looking" argument has been going on for years, and while there is some demographic data to support parts of that debate, it seems a bit too much to assert that a "cultural divide" is responsible for the tendency of Mac users to buy music more frequently than Windows users. I thought Peter Kafka at Silicon Valley Insider made the obvious point that the survey did not: iTunes is bundled with Macs. I'm willing to accept the premise that people buy Macs with entertainment applications in mind, but does this conclusion from the press release really make sense? "Apple's growing share in the personal computing environment--and continued success with iPod sales--is a potential harbinger for the continued growth of digital music."

If Apple's Mac market share were to increase to say 20 percent--which would be about in line with market leader Hewlett-Packard's share--would that mean that all those former Windows users who didn't want to pay to download digital music would suddenly see the light and turn into online music shoppers simply because they switched to a Mac and jumped that "cultural divide?" It's not like the Windows world doesn't have options for legally purchasing and organizing music online; in fact, Apple offers the most popular one. That statement seems to be saying that the computer, not the person using it or even the songs themselves, is the thing that drives digital music sales, and I find that hard to believe.

Anyway, for the record, NPD said that Apple did not commission the study nor had anything to do with its content or conclusions. An NPD representative said "the Apple info we included in the press release consisted of just a few small nuggets in the overall report that (analysts) thought might get some press coverage during the dog days of the holidays, that's all." Fair enough, although I'm going to be really skeptical if the next report is entitled: "Survey: Mac users more likely to get dates, consistently hit jump shots."