Mizuho Securities’ Abhey Lamba today becomes the latest analyst to trim his expectations for the PC market, cutting this year’s growth projection to just 1% growth in units this year from a prior protection for 2% to 3% growth.
Lamba cites recent “checks” of production rates from Taiwanese original design manufacturers (ODM), which reinforce his view that there is going to be a “pause” in the purchase of new computers in advance of Microsoft‘s (MSFT) introduction of “Windows 8,” expected later this year. He’s also concerned current global macroeconomic worries are hitting PC results.
Although Microsoft has said they’ll offer rebates on Windows to current PC purchasers, that won’t do as much as past rebates to goose present sales, he writes, because “this time the key differentiating features of Windows 8 are reliant on the touch interface and currently there are very limited hardware offerings that support touch screens.”
“As such, many consumers are likely to wait for the new touch-compliant hardware.”
On the other hand, growth may be higher in 2013 than previously expected once Windows 8 gets rolling, he thinks.
Though we lowered our estimates for 2012, our shipment expectations for 2013 have actually moved higher to 7% from 5% previously. We believe PC vendors should be able to lower price points of touch enabled machines during 2013, which should stimulate and drive acceleration in consumer demand.
Lamba cut his estimate for Dell (DELL) for the current fiscal year from $60.239 billion to $59.25 billion, and from $1.94 to $1.92 per share in earnings for the year. For Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) for this year from $123.57 billion to $122 billion in revenue, and from $4.10 to $4.08 per share in profit.
Those numbers are below the consensus of $60.06 billion in revenue and $1.93 for Dell, and $123.33 billion for HP, though Lamba’s EPS number for HP is still higher than the consensus $4.06 per share. Lamba didn’t change his estimates for Apple (AAPL), and he thinks the company remains “the bright spot” in the computer market.
Lamba writes that his “checks” of the supply chain suggest that some parties are expecting “a significant uptick” in demand for iPad over the next several quarters. Lamba also adds this parenthetical note about expectations for Apple to introduce a television set:
We do not expect the new Apple TV to be launched this year as our checks indicate that while Apple is experimenting with a few different ideas for its new TV product line, it has yet to finalize the design for its product.
Dell shares today are up 8 cents, or 0.7%, at $11.94, HP stock is up 22 cents, or 1%, at $21.63, and Apple shares are up $2.31, or 0.4%, at $573.48.
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