More about PC Sales

Just following on from my last entry.

According to this piece in The Register:

Apple was the only major computer maker to increase its shipments into the UK PC market during the final three months of 2011.
The article was quoting figures from Gartner that excluded iPad sales, despite that Apple showed a growth in shipments of 17.2% when comparing Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.

Comparatively HP dropped 27%, Dell dropped 32.2%, Acer lost 62.4% and Toshiba lost 5.4%.

The big question is if this is being driven by:

1. Everyone wants a Mac because Windows is so yesterday.
2. Everyone is waiting for Ultrabooks running Windows.
3. Everyone has decided to skip Windows 7 and wait for Windows 8.

I do know that many training providers for the corporate markets are now offering Mac training on a regular basis so maybe there is a change happening in the market.

Just another word on Financial Analysts

Recently I’ve been working with a client in the hardware industry.

They’re not a huge company, but, they’ve won business with the new Woolworths hardware stores - Masters. I’m helping them to upgrade their warehouse management and logistics systems to support the growth in business they’re projecting from Masters expansion plans.

I got pulled into a meeting with the Managing Director where he showed me this piece from the SMH.

He wanted to know what I thought. Would Woolworths pull out of the hardware market? What did it mean for him and his business?

This is the sort of idiotic dribble from a so called ‘expert’ that does no good for anyone except for turning the analyst from a spreadsheet jockey into a ‘rock star’ analyst. It’s great for his career. Not so much for anyone else.

Masters will bleed money. They’re buying property for their new stores, stocking up and expanding. Their target is 150 stores in 60 months, that’s just over 2 stores a month, every month for 5 years.

Congratulations Mr. Financial Analyst - you managed to state the obvious and you think this makes you some sort of genius?

Yes they will bleed money, at the start, and then they’ll get to the tipping point and they’ll start to make money - I’m sure some analyst will turn around and say that they forecast that would happen too…

All I told my client was “this report was put together by an analyst who is no different to the analysts that said sub-prime mortgages were a safe bet and we all saw how smart those guys really were”.

Woolworths are in business to make money and they wouldn’t get into this market lightly. Neither would their partner in this venture Lowe’s.