Though Apple didn’t offer discount this holiday on its prime products the iPhone, iPod Touch and iMac, it however managed to score better sales. The survey was carried out by Piper Jaffray’s team under Gene Munster  who counted the sales of Mac and the iPhone for ten hours in five Apple stores on Friday and reported the sales were up to the expectations. The report stated the sales for Mac averaged 13 per hour while those of iPhone averaged 3.4 pieces per hour. With sales not falling prey to the current crisis Apple joins the ranks of Walmart and Amazon for seeing the slumping holidays sales through, successfully.

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In spite of the general economic downturn, ‘Black Friday’ sales of Apple computers were “better than expected,” analysts told investors Monday.

Like past Black Friday sales, Apple offered discounts on seven products with an 8 percent discount.

However, Mac sales we more than six times what they were in November, according to Piper Jaffray. Analyst Gene Munster said an average of 13 Macs per hour were sold Friday compared to two computers per hour in November. Munster based his numbers on 10 hours of monitoring five Apple retail stores.

Friday, Apple cut its “unibody” MacBooks by $101 and $51 discounts on the $999 white plastic entry-level MacBook. One-day price reductions of $51 on the entry-level 2.4GHz iMac and $101 for the 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz aluminum all-in-ones were also unveiled.

iPhones did not share in the same level of consumer enthusiasm. Munster said iPhone sales averaged 3.4 per hour compared to 1.3 per hour in November.

Although the analyst expects the iPhone will receive a boost in holiday sales, the impact will be “minimal.”

In a wider review of Black Friday Apple sales, Deutsche Bank said “demand for Apple was solid considering the macro backdrop.” Both Mac and iPod sales for the day likely were “modestly above” Deutsche Bank’s estimates. The firm, which reviewed retail and online sales at more than 125 storefronts, expects Apple to report 5 million iPhone sales for the quarter.

Deutsche found the new MacBooks were popular Black Friday offerings with 2GHz and 2.4GHz MacBooks outselling the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

Best Buy locations reported strong demand for the iPhone and shoppers at AT&T stores preferred the lower-priced 8GB iPhone. The reverse was true for iPod shoppers: the 16GB nanos were outselling the 8GB nanos, according to Deutesche.

Apple met or beat analyst expectations for sales over the weekend, selling 13 Macs and 3.4 iPhones every hour, according to one Piper Jaffray estimate.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said that Apple's Black Friday promotions helped drive retail store traffic, according to reports from distributors. Wu also noted that the iPod touch is sold out at Amazon.com, which leads him to believe that Apple could sell $10 billion worth of products this quarter.

Thomas Weisel Partners' Doug Reid got the impression that Apple sales were up from last year. He was less optimistic about Dell's retail performance at Best Buy locations, noting that salespeople there were not strongly recommending Dell models at 35 stores they checked.

Weisel analysts expect Apple to sell 2.4 million Macs during the fourth quarter.

Deutsche Bank analysts also conducted their own checks over the weekend, and found demand to be "solid," considering the current global economic woes. They expect Apple to sell 5 million iPhones this quarter, and reiterated their "buy" rating and price target of $150 per share.

AAPL was down slightly in morning trading.

TUAWAnalyst Roundup: Black Friday pretty good for Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Munster's team spent 10 hours counting Mac and iPhone sales in five Apple stores last Friday. They calculated:

• Mac sales averaged 13 per hour, up from 2 per hour in early November.
• iPhone sales averaged 3.4 per hour, up from 1.3 per hour in early November. Friday's iPhone sales numbers are "likely understated" because they missed some iPhone gift card sales.

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Apple could release an $800 netbook in 2009, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors Tuesday. Munster is just the latest advising the Cupertino, Calif. computer maker to offer an inexpensive laptop.

Although CEO Steve Jobs has poo-poohed talk of a netbook, dismissing the growing trend as just a “nascent market,” Munster believes Apple has the perfect platform: the MacBook Air.

In a note to clients, the Apple watcher said Apple could release an 11-inch version of its MacBook Air notebook and sell the unit for between $800 to $1,000.

Monday, Apple’s share price jumped 12 percent boosted by analyst opinion that sales of MacBooks could overcome any drop in demand for Mac desktops or iPods.

In spite of talk by some, such as Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi, that Apple must introduce a lower-priced product to meet the demands of the depressed economy, Munster said Apple is selling more $1,200 aluminum MacBooks than its $999 white plastic entry models.

Munster also suggested Apple could offer a sub-$199 iPhone without 3G or GPS. As competition from RIM and others heats up in the smartphone market, Apple needs to follow its iPod strategy, offering several tiers of iPhones, the Piper Jaffray analyst wrote.

As the December fiscal quarter nears, Apple may announce the iPhone will be available in 73 countries by the end of the year with 989 million worldwide subscribers, according to Munster.

Worldwide PC sales will see only a single-digit increase in 2009 with growth next year reaching only 4.3 percent - a nearly 75 percent reduction over prior expectations of a 11.9 percent increase, a research firm announced Thursday.

The picture for Apple sales appears brighter than the glum outlook for overall PC demand. Earlier this week, Piper Jaffray’s Apple watcher Gene Munster said he expects Mac sales to grow 8 percent to 16 percent when Apple reports in December.

Researchers at iSuppli said the drastically lower expectations were due to the embattled economy.

“The result of the financial turmoil is less money to spend,” iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins said. “With less money to spend, application markets, like PCs, have been impacted.” Wilkins said in a statement.

Notebook computer sales will tripled as demand for desktops decline.

Sales of desktop PCs in 2009 are expected to fall five percent with notebooks growing 15 percent as demand for low-cost “netbooks,” according to iSuppli.

Those netbooks could be one of the few high points in sluggish computer sales. On Wednesday, IDC announced chips such as Intel’s Atom processor aimed at the netbook market would grow by 8.3 percent amid gloomy projections for the overall chip sector.

A day before cutting its prediction for PC sales, iSuppli announced it expects chip demand to fall 2 percent instead of grow by 3.5 percent as it had announced just last month.

Wall Street expects Apple to ship 18.6 million iPods this quarter, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. That would represent a 16% year-over-year decline, from 22.1 million iPods shipped during the December quarter last year. (Munster's extrapolation of October iPod sales estimates suggests Apple could actually ship as many as 19 million iPods this quarter. But that's still below last year's mark.)

The decline would cap off years of declining December quarter iPod shipment growth: 525% in 2004; 207% in 2005; 50% in 2006; and 5% in 2007. For many of those quarters, iPod revenue was 40% to 50% of Apple's total December quarter sales.

The good news, of course, is that there's a new product in town: Apple's red-hot iPhone, which is leading growth in its portable gadget division. Munster expects Apple to ship 6.4 million iPhones this quarter, almost triple the 2.3 million it sold during the December quarter last year.

That suggests Apple could ship 25 million iPods and iPhones combined this quarter, up 2.3% from last year, when it shipped 24.44 iPods and iPhones combined in the December quarter. This is still weak unit growth. But Apple sells its iPhones for about $500-$600 wholesale (or more), which is between 3x and 4x the $150 or so it gets for each iPod sold.

It's possible iPod growth could bounce back, especially if Apple extends the iPod touch into some sort of mini-computing/tablet platform. But the iPod, for now, is out as Apple's growth driver. These days, that's the iPhone and the Mac.

See Also:
Apple To Sell iPhone At Wal-Mart? Sure, Why Not?
Apple Mac Sales On Track, iPod Looking Better Than Expected
Apple's Stock Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
Next Year's iPhone Sales: A Crapshoot

Top 10 Crazy Celebrities With Websites

1. Britney Spears | Visit Website

Britney is the queen of crazy, and her website is truly fit for a queen. its got a great web 2.0 style design with all the trimmings and is one of the only celeb sites that is taking advantage of social marketing by linking to several accounts on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace!

2. Michale Jackson | Visit Website

Michael Jackson, like his website seems to be stuck in the past. Its got a very 10 years ago feel to it and for some reason has a big ad spot on it? I thought Michael Jackson would have enough scratch to pay for his hosting bill without ads!

3. Tom Cruise | Visit Website

Tome cruise is arguably one of the craziest stars on this list, most well known and also has the best website in my opinion. Its modern, clean and has a really cool long reel of clips from all his movies in chronological order.

4. Gary Busey | Visit Website

Gary Busey’s website is a mess and in desperate need of a make over. Unfortunately Mr. Busey is currently on the latest season of celebrity rehab so it may be a bit before we see a spiffy new website to match the hopefully new and improved Busey!

5. Paris Hilton | Visit Website

Paris may be a bit wacky, but she sure knows how to brand herself. Her website is simple, classy, girly and pretty fitting for the image Paris is trying to portray. its not cluttered with a ton of stuff and does a good job pushing her new music.

6. Mariah Carey | Visit Website

Mariah Carey’s website has a pretty interesting layout, its dark an mysterious looking as well. I think it has way to many buy now buttons for her album and itunes though, really that’s pretty much all the site is, a giant screen filled with buy now buttons.

7. Whitney Houston | Visit Website

The site of Whitney Houston is modest, with just a few pages, some basic info and a little media player. While the site is nice and does its job fine, I think the legendary Whitney Houston could step it up a little!

8. Courtney Love | Visit Website

Courntey Love is the definition of crazy, but surprisingly her website is pretty sweet. even though the design is nice it looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while. The forums is down and there is only like one weird blog post from 2007, seriously check it out.

9. Tyra Banks | Visit Website

Tyra Banks is well known for being on magazine covers and her website is very fitting. Its looks like a sideshow of magazine covers that cover recent news about Tyra. I think this is a great, yet simple approach for her website.

10. Sarah Palin | Visit Website

Ok so shes more of a recent political celebrity, but forget the way she speaks and carries herself. Anyone who names there kids, Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow and Trig makes this list! With the 150k she spent on her clothes for the campaign, you think she would have spent a few bucks on a nice website design!

For the second time this month, Barclays Capital’s Ben Reitzes reduced his target price for Apple shares. Citing lower handset expectation and increased pressure on higher priced products, Reitzes

Photo: Cishore/Flickr

On Nov. 7, Reitzes trimmed his target price for Cupertino shares to $121 from $125.

The Barclays analyst told investors he expects a two percent drop in first quarter 2009 earnings to $9.4 billion, down from $9.6 billion. Apple may earn $34.4 billion for 2009, a drop from $35.7 billion previously expected. In fiscal 2010, Apple earnings could rise 18 percent to $40.55 billion, a drop from $42.8 billion early estimated.

The analyst Monday pointed to fellow analyst Jeff Kvall’s reduced estimate for global handset demand. Kvall now sees handset sales falling three percent for the fourth quarter, a near reversal from a four percent gain previously forecast.

Along with trimming his target price for Apple shares, Reitzes also lowered his iPhone projection to the first quarter of 2009 to 4.5 million units , down from 5 million.

Earlier this month, the analyst cut his iPhone estimate to 5 million handsets, lower than 6.2 million phones previously projected.

In addition to trimming iPhone growth, the analyst halved expected Mac sales for the first quarter to a four percent gain, down from a prior 8 percent upswing forecast.

“Ben Reitzes is simply being overly bearish,” independent Apple analyst and blogger Andy Zaky told Cult of Mac. Reitzes is not including Apple’s massive $880 million in deferred iPhone sales, Zaky explained. Such deferred income means Apple will have huge fiscal 2009 earnings before selling a single product. Apple earned $9.6 billion in fiscal 2008 when it had just $86 million in income differed from the first quarter.

Zaky initially estimates Apple will report selling around 8 million iPhones for the first quarter of 2009.

Joining that bullish estimate is Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray’s Apple watcher. Munster continues to expect 6.4 million iPhones for December and projects a 5-15 percent drop in iPhone growth for the quarter - far less than a 40 percent production drop projected earlier this month by Friedman, Billings and Ramsey.

After watching Apple store activity, Munster said Monday he noted 28 iPhone sales per store daily, a drop from 95 handsets per day in July.

That sales slip may be balanced by increased international demand for the Apple handset, Munster believes.

Of course it's far too early to predict what's going to happen to the economy and gadget sales over the next month and a half. But based on October sales data from research firm NPD Group, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster extrapolates Apple could report the following results for its December quarter:

• 2.5 million to 2.7 million Macs, up 8%-16% year-over-year, and in line with the Street's expected 2.6 million.
• 18.5 million to 19 million iPods, down 14%-16% year-over-year, and beating the Street's expected 18.6 million.

Again, far too early to predict Apple's Christmas sales. But a good sign.

See Also:
Apple's Stock Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
CNBC's Erin Burnett Gushes On BlackBerry Bold, Disses iPhone
Next Year's iPhone Sales: A Crapshoot