The new iMac “is luring crossover buyers like never before, and that should help Jobs & Co. do well despite the industry’s suffering,” columnist Charles Haddad writes in his latest Byte of the Apple column for Business Week Online .
| <?php virtual(“/includes/boxad.inc”); ?> |
Not only are Mac faithful buying the new iMac, first-time users and PC diehards are falling for it, too, he adds. In fact, nine of the 22 consumer reviews of the new machines on Amazon.com are from Wintel users.
“People are crossing over the wall,” Charles Wolf, PC analyst at Needham & Co., told Haddad. “The new iMac is going to be more successful with Windows users than the first one.”
Apple has sold 125,000 of the consumer models and claims to be shipping 5,000 a week. If you’re interested in buying a new iMac, fill out the Reader Survey that’s part of Haddad’s column.
“It’s not outrageous to think Apple might double its market share, given the company’s small base now,” David C. Bailey, a PC analyst with Gerard Klauer Mattison, told Haddad.
And the columnist opines that Apple’s profits are expected to surge. For the company’s fiscal second quarter ending Mar. 31, Wall Street is estimating that Apple will report earnings of 11 cents a share, on revenue of $1.43 billion. Wolf is forecasting that Apple’s earnings per share will grow to 95 cents next year, from 55 cents this year. Revenue should climb by $1 billion, to $8 billion by 2003, estimates the analyst.
“He expects the earnings surge to play out over the next six to seven quarters, with Apple leading every other PC maker except Dell Computer,” Haddad writes.