Incorrect
prediction 
Scott Craig of Banc of America Securities
March 3, 2008
Recent checks in Asia for iPhone production suggest another sizable adjustment down to less than 1 million units for [the fiscal second quarter of 2008]. We believe that demand in the U.S. may have been impacted by the anticipation of a new 3G phone and that European demand for a non 3G iPhone remains lackluster.
We estimate roughly 8 million units for 2008 compared to management's 10 million unit outlook."
February 1, 2008
We continue to believe that desktops and notebooks are the key driver of the Apple story. Both desktop and notebook production numbers have moved up by 20% from expectations in early January, indicating potentially solid demand thus far in the March quarter, as well as some inventory replenishment.
However, iPod production for the March quarter appear to have been significantly reduced, down 10–20% from early January and down 30% from early December.
Current production expectations for March imply a 5–10% year-over-year unit decline, versus our expectation for 5% year-over-year unit sales growth during the March quarter, likely implying a continuing inventory rightsizing and sales sluggishness.
We remain concerned that iPhone production and demand are lackluster. After several data-points in December and early January indicated large production cuts of 50% to iPhone production for the March quarter, our recent checks reveal that production levels are 40–55% higher for [the first calendar quarter of 2008], than the recent cuts originally suggested, although still down significantly from two months ago.
We would be buyers of the stock at these levels, given our Asian checks on Mac production, and especially given we believe the main driver for the company and its stock near-term is notebooks and desktops. With the stock currently trading at 21 times our 'cash' earnings-per-share estimate for fiscal 2008, relative to a 4-year median multiple of 32 times (typically 25), we view the risk-return profile as more compelling following the sell-off post December quarter earnings."
Keith Bachman of Banc of America Securities
March 14, 2007
We believe that Apple will introduce a new notebook, with flash based storage in the second half of 2007. Turn on time will be shorter (with flash), and we imagine the form factor will be thinner than existing notebooks.
We don’t yet know if Apple’s potential move into flash based notebooks is an anomaly or a trend, and we need to get a better handle on other vendors’ intentions to assess the impact to Western Digital Corp. and Seagate Technology. Our initial take on the recent developments is that the impact to the drive market from the encroachment of flash should be very small in 2007, outside of lower potential unit growth in the small form factor drives, such as 1.8 inch."
March 2, 2007
We believe that Apple will sell approximately $185 million of Leopard in the June and Sept quarters, which we assume will be biased to the June quarter, depending on the release date. We believe that Leopard will sell for around $129."
July 31, 2006
We see the same product introduction schedule as we have mentioned previously - a new Nano late in the September quarter and modestly upgraded Video iPod in time for a holiday demand.
We have not included any impact from Apple’s phone, which we believe will come in the June 2007 quarter."
The
2nd generation iPod nano is released on September 12, 2006 and features a scratch-resistant,
brushed aluminum casing and multiple color choices
(green, silver, black, pink, blue). 2 GB ($149), 4 GB ($199),
and 8 GB ($249).
The
iPhone is announced at the 2007 Macworld Expo and is scheduled to be released
in June 2007.
June 3, 2005
We note that it has been reported that Apple flash suppliers (Samsung and Toshiba) are ramping up their production of higher capacity NAND flash chips in both 2G and 4G. We believe that it is likely that Apple will introduce new higher capacity flash players (perhaps with a screen) sometime this summer."
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