Katie MarsalHaving learned from past miscues, Apple Computer appears to have more aptly prepared itself for this year's critical holiday buying season, research and investment firm PiperJaffray said Thursday.
"While some may see this as a sign that demand is lower, we believe Apple has simply improved its ability to anticipate and avoid constraints during peak buying times," he wrote.
Historically, Apple has been constrained by supply during the holiday shopping season with long product lead-times. But data taken from the current month shows the supply ramp improving, Munster said.
While the analyst acknowledges that Apple "will likely always struggle to find the balance of supplying hot new products just after they launch," it's doing a better job as a company in anticipating seasonal buying patterns and ramping iPod and Mac production accordingly.
According to the analyst's checks, lead-times are averaging 24 hours across all iPod and Mac products this month — down from a 1-2 days delay average in 2005, and an average 6 day delay in 2004 (5 days for iPods, 7 days for Macs).
Munster maintains an "Outperform" rating on shares of Apple with a price target of $99.
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"Meet the Munsters!"
Apple's design and marketing folks get the liions share of the credit for apple's success, but people never seem to appreciate how well run that company is from a management perspective.
I would agree with the analyst's opinion. When I ordered my iMac 2 years ago it was shipped by Fedex straight from China to my house in the US. That could not have been cheap and it took close to a week. I just ordered a mac for my parents on Monday night (yes, Monday night) and it was delivered Wednesday morning. The Fedex tracking had it leaving a warehouse near Harrisburg, PA. Apple has smartly staged a large number of standard configs of iMacs and probably other products close to the east coast where many of their customers live. That's cheaper for Apple (no more air shipping from China) and I'm a happier customer because I got it faster. With that said, it's now going to sit under the tree for a couple of weeks... =(
Having learned from past miscues, Apple Computer appears to have more aptly prepared itself for this year's critical holiday buying season, research and investment firm PiperJaffray said Thursday.
In a side note to clients, Sr. Research Analyst Gene Munster said Apple is showing that its learned to better anticipate seasonal patterns and "is poised to monetize iPod and Mac demand" better this year than it did in the prior two years.
"While some may see this as a sign that demand is lower, we believe Apple has simply improved its ability to anticipate and avoid constraints during peak buying times," he wrote.
Historically, Apple has been constrained by supply during the holiday shopping season with long product lead-times. But data taken from the current month shows the supply ramp improving, Munster said.
While the analyst acknowledges that Apple "will likely always struggle to find the balance of supplying hot new products just after they launch," it's doing a better job as a company in anticipating seasonal buying patterns and ramping iPod and Mac production accordingly.
According to the analyst's checks, lead-times are averaging 24 hours across all iPod and Mac products this month -- down from a 1-2 days delay average in 2005, and an average 6 day delay in 2004 (5 days for iPods, 7 days for Macs).
Munster maintains an "Outperform" rating on shares of Apple with a price target of $99.
Another testimonial: Yesterday I ordered iPod shuffles for the entire family (13), complete with engraving, and 11 iTunes cards. Yesterday evening I received shipping confirmation for the iPods, and today I received all 11 iTunes cards.
Wow!
Does this mean that Apple is getting away from their "Just In Time" manufacturing model and has started to warehouse more inventory?
Or has Apple added more manufacturing capacity?