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Apple (AAPL) Dominates Wireless on Black Friday, RIM (RIMM) Bleeding Fast

November 28, 2011 9:21 AM EST
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Black Friday was positive for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Synchronoss (Nasdaq: SNCR) and cautious for RIM (Nasdaq: RIMM), analysts at Wedbush said Monday. Surprisingly even Garmin (Nasdaq: GRMN) had a "constructive" start to the holiday season.

While most electronic retailer saw a hefty amount of traffic, the five Apple stores the firm checked had "wall-to-wall traffic." Wedbush came away positive on Apple, which the firm believes will post strong sales across its product lines -- especially the iPhone. Demand remains solid for the iPhone 4S as several stores had no inventory of the 16GB and 32GB models despite no discounting. Wedbush sees upside to its iPhone unit estimate of 27.7 million.

For RIM, the firm noted interest in BlackBerrys and PlayBooks is "dropping significantly." Wedbush sees risk to its 14.0 million BlackBerry estimate.

Also in wireless, the firm said it saw solid shelf space for Samsung and saw little discounting for Samsung Android devices. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) was essentially "non-existent" in U.S. stores. The firm expect this trend to change with the introduction of new Nokia Windows Phone devices in 2012.

The firm remains neutral to slightly positive on Garmin. "While PND sales are weak, we see very little pricing pressure and see strong sales for Outdoor and Fitness products," Wedbush said.

Synchronoss will be a key beneficiary from overall growth in connected devices, especially via its Apple and likely Best Buy relationships, the firm noted. ComScore indicated that Best Buy was the third-most visited retail website while Apple was fifth.

The firm has an Outperform rating on Apple and Synchronoss. Nokia, RIM, Best Buy and Garmin are all rated Neutral.


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