If you have other quantitative data that you can share with me, such as iTunes video sales, I’d love to add that in.  In particular, I’m interested in trending market share numbers for Macs, iPods, and iTunes, but I’ve had a hard time finding a consistent source that is clear about whether the numbers represent the U.S. or the world market share.

 

Revenue from Mac sales is indicated with the purple dots.  Number of Mac units sold is shown with the blue line — the unit sales are multiplied by a factor of 1500 in order to show up on the scale of this graph, and so that the trend of unit sales can be easily compared with revenue.  Scaling by 1500 makes it apparent that Apple is targeting an average sale price of $1500 for Macs overall.  You can see, for example, that since the second (fiscal) quarter of 2005 (ending approx. Mar. 30, 2005), the average revenue has dipped below the $1500 level that was extremely consistent before that time.  At around that time as well, Mac sales jumped significantly and have maintained that growth.

 

Revenue from iPod sales is indicated with brown dots.  Number of iPod units sold is shown with the brown line.  iPod unit sales are scaled by a factor of 200 to show up on the scale of the graph, and so the trend of unit sales can be compared with revenue.  In this case, you can see that Apple is targeting an average sale price of about $200 for iPods.  The exponential growth in iPod sales is obvious, and the jump in holiday sales is apparent for the last 4 years.  This year, post-holiday sales dropped more than one would have expected based on the historical pattern, though release dates for new iPod models can help clarify this (iPod and iPod accessory launch dates appear as green squares along the bottom of the graph); in 2005, the iPod Shuffle was introduced in January and made possible a growth in unit sales even as revenue dropped due to the lower price of a Shuffle.

 

If you line up the stock prices with the main graph, it’s clear that iPod revenue closely matches stock price trends.  I’m not going to offer any stock advice, but it’s pretty clear that investors have tracked iPod revenue more closely than other factors like overall performance.

 

It’s not really a secret but I think a lot of people aren’t fully absorbing the reality of how important Apple’s retail strategy is.  The number of retail stores is graphed cumulatively in the yellow triangles, and scaled to be visible on this graph.  Each individual store opening is shown.  Retail store revenue appears as the light blue diamonds.  Apple has aggressively and systematically grown their retail presence and the revenue is substantial.  These stores ensure that Apple keeps a greater share of the profit of iPod and Mac sales than otherwise, and since no one else in the industry has anything similar in terms of a retail chain, they have the opportunity for much more profit per product sale than any of their competitors.  The question is whether more retail stores will produce enough additional sales to continue justifying additional retail stores, and its not clear whether retail stores are driving sales growth or simply benefitting from sales growth.

 

The cumulative number of iTunes songs sold is graphed with dark blue dots.  These clearly show the exponential growth in sales, though the fact that they’re cumulative numbers makes it difficult to see when sales are growing faster or slowing down.  Music Related Revenue, which includes both iTunes song sales and sales of iPod accessories, is graphed with the blue triangles and can give some idea of when iTunes sales are jumping, but its unclear how much of this is from the accessories market.

 

Software sales, shown with light gray boxes, are a bit of a surprise.  Despite massive expansion in Apple’s software offerings, revenue growth is not seeming to exceed growth in Mac shipments.  Though admittedly, this particular point deserves some deeper analysis, I would have expected the recent apparent success of iLife and various professional applications would have had more impact.  One explanation may be, for example, that sales of Mac OS X releases are so successful that it hides the effects of other software sales.