Another earnings call, another excellent, detailed set of charts from Jason Snell.
Jump down to the section of Mac sales:
Mac sales were down 13 percent year over year, and revenue was down five percent. It’s understandable given the environment—the year-ago’s quarter saw new MacBook Pros being released in June, while this year they didn’t release until July, after Apple’s third quarter ended.
That last bit is critical. As you read the reaction to Apple’s earnings, you’ll no doubt run into the “Mac is doomed” take, based on the numbers released yesterday. But, as Jason points out, the new MacBook Pro lineup, with its third generation, membrane protected keyboard and Apple keyboard exchange program in place, kicked in after the 3rd quarter ended.
Too early for sales numbers on the new Macs but, I will say, I’ve been waiting for the keyboard brouhaha to resolve itself and this new warranty and anti-crumb membrane were enough for me to buy in. I bought my new MacBook Pro last week and I am really happy with it.
My experience, as well as chats with other folks I’ve spoken with who’ve also been waiting to buy a new Mac, makes me bullish. I think we’ll see a nice upward slope on the next set of Mac numbers. My 2 cents.
Apple Services growth, very impressive.
The new MBPs will likely help margins, but they are expensive, high-end machines and I doubt they will impact sales volumes much.
Apple’s mainstream notebook choices remain crappy: buyers can choose between the ancient MacBook Air, or the year+ old non-TB MacBook and its compromised keyboard.
Yeah, we’ll see the Mac is DOOMED BS and the people who say it really really need to be taught that a single data point can’t be used to extrapolate a trend.