Apple Review: 12/08/07

You guessed it, Apple is poised to make large market share gains. So says Investor's Business Daily and their measurement of a recent ChangeWave survey. How much remains to be seen. The numbers IBD picked up were very promising:

ChangeWave recently conducted two surveys that gauged PC-buying plans over the next 90 days — a period running from the holiday shopping season into first-quarter 2008. It polled members of its alliance, which includes technology and business executives with leading companies in select industries. Its members tend to be more tech-savvy and have higher disposable incomes than the general public.

The Rockville, Md.-based firm's poll results have proved prescient, predicting the rise in PC sales for Apple and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and the downturn for Dell (DELL) in recent years.

The latest ChangeWave consumer poll found that 29% of likely notebook and desktop PC buyers in the next 90 days are planning to get a Mac. That's higher than consumer purchase intent for HP laptops (21%), HP desktops (24%) and Dell laptops (28%). But Dell had higher demand for its desktops (31%).

The trend line is clearly up for Apple. Two years ago, 16% of likely notebook PC buyers and 11% of desktop PC buyers planned to buy Macs. Demand for Macs has risen steadily ever since. Analysts credit the "halo effect" from the company's popular iPod portable music players and iPhone smart phones. People that buy and like iPods and iPhones are inclined to try Macs.

Why the big change?

More consumers are buying Macs because they're turned off by PCs using Windows operating system, Smith says. Complaints about the latest version of Windows, called Vista, and positive reviews for the new Apple Mac OS, called Leopard, have fueled Mac sales, he says.

Nearly one-in-four respondents (24%) of the most recent poll, completed in early November, say that the release of the Leopard operating system makes them more likely to buy a Mac in the future.

What about in the business? Apple is improving but didn't fare nearly as well.

A separate ChangeWave poll of corporate PC buyers found increasing demand for Apple as well. For companies planning to buy computers next quarter, 7% of laptop buyers and 6% of desktop buyers plan to get Macs. That's up from 4% of laptop buyers and 3% of desktop buyers two years ago. Windows PCs, led by those from HP and Dell, have a much stronger hold over the commercial market than the consumer market.

Apple still has a long way to go to get any significant market share. They are starting from such a small percentage that it even significat gains still put it at a small percentage of the overall market. For more numbers, head over to the article.

Or take our survey.

source

While we absolutely love the designs that Jonathan Ive have produced throughout the last 10 years at Apple, it is hard to see him ascending to the Apple throne as easily as the Times predicts in today's article. The Times says that he is the cool factor of Apple (I guess when compared to Tim cook and Phil Schiller)

Could this 40-year-old gym-toned, shaven-headed, Aston Martin-driving Brit, who lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco, with his wife, who is a historian, and their twin sons, be the next man to run Apple Computer?

and isn't implicated in any stock options backdating.

The SEC has indicated that it has no plans to take action against Apple, but it has filed fraud charges against Nancy Heinen, the company’s former general counsel, and settled an investigation into Fred Anderson, the computer company’s former chief financial officer.

Despite Apple’s reassurances to the public, many are convinced that the SEC is still circling – and as the case against Ms Heinen progresses (she denies any wrongdoing) interest in Apple’s internal politics is only likely to heighten.

It is thought that Mr Jobs himself has been asked to give an official statement, or deposition, as part of the case. Apple maintains that Mr Jobs did nothing wrong, and is eager to point out that the company has been praised by the SEC for its “swift, extensive and extraordinary cooperation”. Yet Apple is also facing a revised lawsuit from a powerful San Francisco law firm that claims that Mr Jobs made hundreds of millions of dollars from unfairly “backdated” stock options.

No matter how remote the possibility of Mr Jobs standing down might be, some investors would be happier if Mr Ive was named officially as the Apple CEO’s successor to avoid future doubt.

Mark Molumphy, the lawyer who is filing the revised lawsuit against Apple, conceded to The Times that Mr Ive was more or less untouchable as far as the stock options litigation goes. “The evidence we’ve seen does not implicate him,” he said.

Both great qualifications.

But, he's not Steve 2.0. He's not a techie. Steve Jobs has a technology background. He's hacked AT&T for profit, worked at Atari before Apple and started NeXT between Apple jobs. He makes many technology decisions that directly affect the direction of the company. Jonathan Ive..not so much...

“I went through college having a real problem with computers,” he said at a rare speech in 2003. “I was convinced that I was technically inept. Right at the end of my time at college, I discovered the Mac. I remember being astounded at just how much better it was than anything else I had tried to use.”

He also doesn't have the keynote giving/reality distortion abilities of Jobs - at least not yet.

There are skeptics, of course. Some have suggested that Mr Ive lacks the charisma to become “Steve 2.0”, and that he could never deliver Mr Jobs’s Hollywood-style press conferences, replayed endlessly on YouTube.

Luckily for Apple, Steve Jobs doesn't seem to be slowing down. If Steve Jobs left today, Tim Cook, Apple COO would most likely take over the helm, like he did during Steve Jobs' cancer surgery recovery. That being said, it is hard to imagine Apple where it is today without the design of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and other devices that came out of Jonathan Ive and his team.

It was the beginning of a remarkable turnaround for Apple, and a series of hit products – including the all-white iMac, the iPod and now the iPhone – that have helped the company’s stock to rise by more than 1,000 per cent in ten years.

Mr Ive and Mr Jobs are said to talk at least once a day, and Mr Ive shares his boss’s perfectionism (it is claimed that Mr Jobs demanded that the iMac not have a single visible screw).

Mr Ive’s salary is not disclosed by Apple, but the company’s revival is thought to have made him very, very wealthy – hence the Aston Martin. It has also brought him many celebrity friends, including Bono, David Byrne, the Talking Heads lead singer, and the designer Paul Smith.

Once described by Business Week magazine as “looking like a graduate student who got lost on the way to Starbucks”, Mr Ive’s rise to power at Apple has astonished company insiders. Apple, after all, is a insular organisation – cultish, some say – and Mr Ive is now considered the Man Behind the Curtain.

“I think Steve Jobs has found somebody in Jony who knows how to complete or even exceed his vision, and do it time and time again,” said Chee Pearlman, who hosted the event at which Mr Ive spoke four years ago.

Mr Ive works in complete secrecy – many Apple employees are not allowed inside his studio – with a dozen or so staff, all of whom earn more than $200,000 a year. His team, which includes a German, an Italian and a New Zealander, is said to come up with some of its best ideas while sitting in the studio’s kitchen eating pizza. Like his boss, and like employees of Apple’s retail stores, Mr Ive turns up to work every morning in jeans, trainers, T-shirt and polo neck sweater.