While most technologies are facing financial losses, Apple is being given an upbeat rating by information technology (IT) industry analysts in the U.S., who recommend buying the company’s shares.
According to analysts AG Edwards, Apple is likely to gain market share on its consumer products, according to an I.T. article by Garry Barker. Apple is as different as its “Think Different” slogan says, because its customers are “materially uninterested” in Wintel alternatives, Brett Miller of AG Edwards says in the article.
“Three or four years ago you could not have said that in the professional graphics and multimedia markets because at that time Windows NT was regarded as the better operating system, but that is no longer true,” Barker said. “The advent of Mac OS X, now at version 10.1, soon to be released, along with the latest QuickSilver G4 towers, Final Cut Pro and QuickTime 5, have all radically changed the outlook. In the mass consumer market, iMacs and iBooks have held up well in a generally depressed personal computer market.”
However, it’s not just the hardware that makes Apple special, but the combination of Mac systems and “ground-breaking” software such as iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Pro, Barker said.
“Two facts are becoming clear,” Miller said in a report published last week. “Apple will be in the face of the consumer and education markets like never before.” Conversely, Wintel makers face a continuing and vicious price war as they battle for marketshare, he said.
So Miller suggests Apple shares are a “buy” and Dell, the biggest maker of consumer PCs and the company most likely to benefit from the Gateway retreat, are a “reduce.” However, that upbeat analysis doesn’t mean that Apple has been immune from the downturn in personal computer sales around the world, only that it has done better than most, Baker writes.