Mac Sales To Rise 26% Next Year?

If you believe the experts, buying some Apple stock would probably not be such a bad idea.

According to a report from Robert Cihra, from Caris & Company (via AppleInsider), Mac sales will rise 26% next year, compared to a 16% rise in the larger PC market.

That would give the power computer manufacturer a total of 4% of the PC market. But whatever Apple has in sales share, it makes up in mindshare. The creator of the very popular and powerful OS X often leads the computing world in style, and functionality.

We all owe Apple a thank you for finally doing away with the floppy drive, and their drive to rid us of the cd-rom drive. The analysts have a price target of $260 a share for Apple stock, and have a buy rating on the company.

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This projection is based on a 10-20% rise in the overall PC market int he coming year, which strikes me as overly optimistic. Even with the launch of Windows 7, and the demand that people hope it will bring, the economy is weak enough that I see little drive for such a large increase in demand.

This graph maps selling prices of certain brands, and units sold. The final numbers are estimates:

As always, Mac has survived such downturns, given their dedicated userbase. But for there to be a double digit rise in the total PC market, there needs to be a major driving impetus. It has at least yet to appear to myself. That said, take the numbers with a grain of salt.

What could cause such a gigantic rise in sales? Other than a rapid solidifying of the US and EU markets for high end computers, which makes little sense, what would have such an effect? Unless the analyst team has private knowledge of upcoming product launches from Apple that we no knowledge of, their numbers seem tinted by their buy-recommendation.

Apple sold 3 million Macs in its most recent quarter.