Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster and his team have been counting sales at Apple retail stores and have told clients — as reported by “Fortune” (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/29/apple-store-count-8-8-ipads-sold-per-hour-per-store-on-black-friday/) — that:
° Macs were leaving the stores at the rate of 8.2 units per hour per store, down from 8.3 last year and 13 two years ago. “While Mac sales were flat year-over-year” he writes, “we believe it is too early to make a call on Macs in the Dec. quarter. Note that Mac NPD data in the first month of the quarter (Oct.) was up 20% year-over-year
° iPads were selling 8.8 units per hour. There are no other Black Friday iPad sales to compare with, but Munster believes these numbers are in line with his prediction that Apple will sell 5.5 million iPads this quarter.
“Most notable in our observations, we noticed that the iPad is gaining traction (driven by lower price vs. the Mac) among demographics in which the Mac has historically not been successful,” he writes. “The bottom line is that Apple’s addressable market is expanding with the iPad.”
