U.S. Mac sales up 39% in Jan. and Feb.
NPD data show iPod sales were also up — 7% year to year — for the first time in 16 months — In a report to clients issued Monday afternoon, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster — a long-time Apple (AAPL) booster — found much to cheer …
Context & Ripple Effects
Monthly NPD sell-through data has become the street's early read on Apple between earnings reports — a role it played back when January Mac growth topped 100 percent in 2007 and again when surveys put Mac share at a then-record level in December 2007's 7.3 percent reading. Gene Munster's Monday note to Piper Jaffray clients leans on that same dataset.
The two headline numbers cut in different directions: Mac unit growth of 39 percent continues the multi-year share-gain arc, while iPod's 7 percent rise is its first year-over-year increase in 16 months — notable because the iPod line had been in decline even as Mac and iPhone carried growth. The data lands three days after iPad pre-orders opened, with Munster framing both lines as evidence of demand strength heading into the quarter.
First-order effects
- Apple's March quarter is tracking ahead on U.S. retail sell-through, giving Munster and other analysts a concrete basis for raising or defending estimates before Apple reports.
- The iPod's return to growth relieves the most-watched bear case on the product lineup — a 16-month slide in the legacy music business that had been offsetting Mac gains since the iPod-and-notebook-driven earnings beats of 2006.
Second-order effects
- Windows PC vendors competing for U.S. retail shelf space now face an Apple growing 39 percent off a large base at premium price points, forcing renewed emphasis on netbook and low-cost Windows 7 pricing to hold unit share.
- With pre-order demand reportedly running at 25,000 iPads per hour at Friday's opening, strong Mac and iPod sell-through gives retailers reason to commit floor space to the iPad launch, compounding Apple's retail-channel leverage.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the structural story is Apple converting a declining media-device business into a halo for higher-margin computing — the same dynamic that took Mac from triple-digit percentage growth in 2007 to sustained share gains against a flat PC market.
- Monthly third-party sell-through data like NPD's increasingly sets the narrative between quarterly reports, sharpening analyst-driven volatility around Apple shares in the weeks before each print.
The trend: Apple is decoupling its growth engine from the maturing iPod line, with U.S. retail sell-through data making the Mac's share gains visible to Wall Street months before official earnings.