It will probably double this year. iLife and iWork are selling very well. Tiger would do well too.

My copies of iLife and iWork came last week, and Tiger will definitely sell well. I think you also have to look at all the Video Editing stuff, JamPacks, etc.

And we thought that Apple was just about Macs, iPods and The Music Store.

That 39% increase sort of snuck up on us and that's without Tiger, iLife 05 and iWork. That bit of news might be the reason why AAPl is up $3.75 today, or was it the new PowerBooks.

It is supposed to be worth that much after result announcement. The general market sentiment is bad then. Today, market sentiment is good because of quiet Iraqi election, drop in oil price and flurry of merger news. This pent-up demand coupled with release of inexpensive yet very capable PowerBooks pushed AAPL to a new all-time high of $77.98, trading at $77.50 now.

Expect to see $100 target breached if Q2 05 result is good. I'm expecting Apple to sell more than 1.3 million Macs and 4.5 million iPods. Revenue should be more than $3.5 billion.

There are a few things that could move AAPL to the $100 mark faster than Q2 results.

1. Newspaper articles covering the difficulty in buying a Mac mini or iPod shuffle. "They sell out before we can put them on the shelves." "We have a waiting list for the next 3 month's deliveries." "Apple opens another production line and still has a back order!" Those types of stories do push the stock a bit - we need about one a fortnight . . .

2. Dual core G4 for PB at 2.0 gigs and a faster FSB. OK, it's not the G5 in some user's wet dreams, but it would kick @ss big time and probably have a nice backorder level, as well as a lot of press.

3. Education updates that get good press. The eMac was not designed for press, but Apple has probably learned their lesson and will do something - just as long as it doesn't have a 32Mb graphics card. A sexy new iBook is also needed.

4. Rumors of a 3 gig G5, possibly based on white papers from IBM, and a leak from Asia that the 40" display is in production and that the graphics card works and is also in production.

5. Tiger released a week after MS delays Longhorn again, saying that their version of Spotlight has been pushed back another few years so it will work well with 2000 and XP.

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kenaustus wrote:
There are a few things that could move AAPL to the $100 mark faster than Q2 results.

1. Newspaper articles covering the difficulty in buying a Mac mini or iPod shuffle. "They sell out before we can put them on the shelves." "We have a waiting list for the next 3 month's deliveries." "Apple opens another production line and still has a back order!" Those types of stories do push the stock a bit - we need about one a fortnight . . .

This seems as likely to drive stock down. "Apple can't predict demand. Apple screws up again. Customers left Fuming". it depends on who writes the story and (if the reporter is waiting for his Mac) what slant they end up putting on it. I'm seeing a number of articles about the Toyota Preus that have a very negative slant. the car hasn't gotten worse, the reporters are sick of waiting for theirs.

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2. Dual core G4 for PB at 2.0 gigs and a faster FSB. OK, it's not the G5 in some user's wet dreams, but it would kick @ss big time and probably have a nice backorder level, as well as a lot of press.

This would be wonderful. Even without the 2Gb.

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3. Education updates that get good press. The eMac was not designed for press, but Apple has probably learned their lesson and will do something - just as long as it doesn't have a 32Mb graphics card. A sexy new iBook is also needed.

Education updates and some large sales. Too many school boards are going Dell because it's "less expensive". A new eMac or at least Mac Mini model targeted at Education would help.

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4. Rumors of a 3 gig G5, possibly based on white papers from IBM, and a leak from Asia that the 40" display is in production and that the graphics card works and is also in production.

That would be really cool but I'm not sure if it would drive stocks. Not many people would be getting them so they really wouldn't be influencing the balance sheet much for a long while. Now if they could drop the price of the 17" or 20" display by 30-50% then analysts would take notice really quick.

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5. Tiger released a week after MS delays Longhorn again, saying that their version of Spotlight has been pushed back another few years so it will work well with 2000 and XP.

This would be so sweet.

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geoduck wrote:
... Too many school boards are going Dell because it's "less expensive". A new eMac or at least Mac Mini model targeted at Education would help ...

Since Mac and WinTel can be easily interchangeable in schools, I reckon they don't use platform-specific applications. Most probably, only for surfing, emailing, and education software. Maybe a few running Microsoft Office and Education Administration applications.

Apple could easily target a $299 Mac mini (less iLife, Quicken and optical drive) at WinTel-using schools.

As for eMac, there are two models configured for education only. No optical drive at $599 and CDROM drive at $649. Apple could easily sell these at $399 and $449 respectively (less mouse, keyboard, iLife and Quicken).

I am surprised that there are no announcements so far. Perhaps, is because is not buying season for education.