Apple is having a solid Christmas

Don’t let the news of Steve Jobs passing on Macworld let you down this holiday season.  Apple is doing really well.  A few news items combine to spell out a very successful holiday quarter.  First of all, portables are outnumbering desktops globally for the first time in history (iSuppli).  This is nothing new for Apple who has been seeing this for over a year in their Mac line.   Apple’s strength is in laptops.

The interesting thing in the overall PC industry is that low margin netbooks have taken most of the desktop marketshare which has resulted in the aforementioned marketshare gain in laptops.  Apple, as you are probably acutely aware doesn’t make netbooks and starts their laptop pricing at $1000.  Add to this the news that Apple sells 7 of the top 25 laptops on the Amazon best seller list.  Amazon, as the top global retailer in electronics, is a bellwether for the industry.   The top laptops (according to Apple 2.0):

• 7 Acer netbooks
• 7 Apple MacBooks (average $1500)
• 4 Asus netbooks
• 2 Samsung netbooks
• 2 MSI netbooks
• 1 OLPC (One laptop per child) XO laptop
• 1 Lenovo Ideapad laptop
• 1 Toshiba Satellite laptop (at $599)

Yep, except for a $600 Toshiba, every PC is a netbook and averages UNDER $400/ea with razor thin margins.  Conversely, the average MacBook is three times that price and a healthy margin for Apple.

Laptops are now the biggest part of the PC world (according to iSuppli), but desktops are still a force to be reckoned with.  Don’t worry.  Apple is also cleaning up in this department, selling 4 of the top 5 desktops on Amazon. 

And what about iPods?  iPod numbers were supposed to be flat this year?  Perhaps, but higher priced iPod touches are the top 2 items on Amazon and 3 of the top 6.  Only one 120Gb Zune stops Apple’s lineup from owning the whole top 10 list in this category.  iPod touches are great news for Apple in other ways because they sell videos, music and apps down the line from itunes.  They also increase Apple’s market share in web browsing.

Oh, and that other product line?  The iPhone?  Yeah, it isn’t doing too bad either.