High hopes for Apple through next year

Piper Jaffray today announced that Apple is its large-cap sector pick through the rest of the calendar year, citing new product launches, continued market-share gain expectations for the Macintosh platform and conservative guidance from the company as factors. According to a report from Forbes, Piper Jaffray said likely product releases this year include a higher capacity iPod shuffle or another form of flash-based iPod altogether and a color screen iPod mini. "We would see any of these products as catalysts for holiday sales." Assuming Apple can grow its market share to three percent in 2006, it would add 14 cents to the 2006 earnings-per-share estimate, according to Piper Jaffray.

Additionally, if Apple can grow its 2006 market share to 3.5 percent, it would add 26 cents to the 2006 earnings per share estimate. Apple's fourth quarter guidance ending September is conservative because a negative impact was expected from the Intel partnership announcement, however Apple apparently indicated that it has not seen a slowdown in Mac sales since the announcement in June.

Filed under: Apple