There is at least one Scrooge this holiday season, and it’s Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw. While there had been estimates of 6 million iPad sales by the end of the year, Kumar has pulled back to an estimate of 5 million because the iPad, and other tablet PCs are just not “must have” purchases.
Other issues may be difficulties in the supply chain, and the analyst notes that Dell and Samsung are cutting back production due to lower-than-predicted sales. Apple has expanded retail outlets who sell the iPad, including Target and Verizon. It’s also been noted by some observers Kumar himself that sales of the 11.6-inch MacBook Air could be cannibalizing the Pad (emphasis on the ‘could be’ as opposed to ‘shown to be with hard evidence).
Apple has estimated sales for 2010 of 4.9 million iPads. Of course it’s all speculation for now. The new iOS 4.2 could stimulate tablet sales, and it should be noted that Apple almost always exceeds predictions. Even Mr. Kumar is still bullish on Apple, and rates the stock as a “market outperform.”
We should note for the record that Kumar’s scorecard as a predictor of market trends and product announcements for Apple is, to put it mildly, quite spotty. Take his iPad estimates with the requisite large grain of salt.
[via the Mac Observer]
Analyst says Christmas may not be so green for the iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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