Neil Hughes
Though many customers were waiting for Tuesday's announcement of new iPads, Apple still managed to ship near 15 million units in the September quarter, new data provided by the company implies.
At Tuesday's presentation, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook revealed that Apple had sold its 170 millionth iPad earlier this month. Wall Street analysts quickly pounced on that figure, with many interpreting it to mean that Apple shipped just shy of 15 million units in the just-concluded September quarter.
If accurate, that would be slightly higher than the 14 million iPads Apple sold in the year-ago quarter.
Maynard Um of Wells Fargo Securities interpreted Apple's announcement to suggest that the company shipped 14.9 million iPads in the September quarter. That would be slightly higher than his projection of 14.6 million for the three-month span.
And Timothy Acuri of Cowen and Company said in a note to investors Wednesday that Apple's commentary implies to him that the company shipped about 15 million iPad units in the September quarter. That would be about in-line with his forecast of 14.9 million units.
Others had a slightly lower take, with Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray saying Apple's announcement implied around 14 million iPads were shipped during the quarter, while Amit Daryanani of RBC Capital Markets now expects "modest downside" to his expectation of 14.8 million units.
Regardless, the number of most interest for analysts in the September quarter will be how many iPhones Apple shipped. The new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launched just over a week after the quarter ended, and reached a record 9 million units in their first three days of availability.
Apple didn't offer any further details on iPhone figures during Tuesday's press conference, but the company will detail total iPhone sales for the quarter when its earnings are published next Monday, Oct. 28, after markets close.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
17 Comments
That's a good quarter for iPad which were due for an update. I think this coming quarter will be pretty decent.
Heck of a quarter, considering iPad has not been updated since April of 2012, unless you count the minor update to iPad 4 last September .....
I didn't contribute to that number, my first generation iPad is still in use daily. However, I do intend to contribute to next quarter's numbers and have also had family and acquaintances asking me when the new iPads would be released. Big period coming up for the iPad I believe.
[quote name="sog35" url="/t/160325/apple-has-sold-170m-ipads-to-date-implying-sales-near-15m-in-sept-quarter#post_2422817"]Mr Cook was using round numbers. Could be anywhere between 168M and 173M [/quote] Generally, when they mention a number, it's the minimum. They've done this pretty consistently over the years. But it's the actual date that Apple is looking to that matters. Was this by the first day in October, right after the end of the quarter, or a week into the new quarter? In other words, is the number quoted on some random day in which it occurred, or the total up to the end of the last quarter? I've been seeing estimates of just 11 million iPads sold this last quarter. I wasn't too shocked at those numbers either, as it's not untypical of what happens to Apple's sales the quarter before a major release of new product. So if they sold the same number as the quarter before, that's really a major victory.
All these numbers don't mean anything, when you know that Apple's market share dropped from 62% to 32%.
With Others taking the lion share of 42%. Is that Others Inc. or a chinese manufacturer?
/s
With Acer coming in at 5th position with 3%, how many Others do you have to lump together to hit 42%?
Can IDC name all the companies that reside under Others?