Brian White's Preliminary November Sales Point To Record Apple Performance

Brian White, Cantor Fitzgerald’s Apple AAPL -1.4% analyst, monitors Taiwan based suppliers that generate a significant amount of their business from Apple. His November Barometer analysis estimates that the supplier’s November sales rose 19%-20% month over month vs. an average of 6% for the previous eight years. (Note that my family and I own Apple shares).

Barometer could indica quarter over quarter growth

White’s Barometer had record months in October and November. If December were to fall its typical 10% month to month (which in my opinion may not occur) the quarter over quarter sales growth for the suppliers would be 28% vs. the typical 13%. This projection is best used for directional purposes vs. absolute numbers since Apple’s quarter over quarter revenue growth has been much higher at 32%, 64% and 52% in the December 2010, 2011 and 2012 quarters, respectively.

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Besides what appears to be strong demand for the new iPhones and iPads one of the reasons for the stronger than normal growth could be a launch of the iPhone with China Mobile CHL +0.46%. Apple would have had to order parts for the iPhones over the past few months if there is going to be an announcement on December 18 with availability soon thereafter.

iPhone 5s and new iPads appear to be running ahead of last years models

Fiksu monitors its Software Developers Kit (SDK) in the applications that use it and what devices it is installed on. Similar to Brian White’s Barometer readings the Fiksu numbers should not be used in absolute terms to calculate Apple’s product sales, I do believe they are useful to get a feeling for how well the products are selling.

In the chart below the iPhone 5s had been running ahead of the iPhone 5 in what percentage of the install base the device were being used through the 75^th day post-launch at 8.68% vs. the 5 at 7.6% a year ago at the same time. As you see in the chart below starting four days ago the iPhone 5 shot significantly above the iPhone 5s.

I believe this is due to the timing of Black Friday in relation to the launch dates of the two iPhones. A year ago Black Friday occurred on the 63^rd day (9 weeks) post launch of the iPhone 5. For the iPhone 5s Black Friday occurred on the 70^th day (10 weeks) post launch. While I’m not certain why the large jump occurred for the 5 on the 76^th day (13 days after Black Friday) I am expecting and will monitor for a similar jump for the 5s and also the 5c starting in a few days timeframe.

Source: Fiksu

Fiksu has also been monitoring the new iPads compared to last year models and has been seeing that the iPad Air has far outpaced the iPad 4 and original mini at the same time post-launch. The iPad mini with Retina display has also moved past the original mini when measuring the usage of its SDK.

Again Fiksu’s data should not be used to calculate actual sales of Apple’s products but I believe they are useful with other data to get a feeling for how sales are going. Estimating unit sales of any product is as much art as science and these indicators are part of the art when projecting.