If You Can't Even Describe The Past, How Can You Predict The Future?
from the iPhorecast dept
When Apple reported its opening weekend iPhone sales, Wall Street was disappointed that the 270,000 figure it gave out failed to hit much loftier estimates. Of course, this raises the old question: did Apple miss estimates or did analysts mis-estimate? In a sense, the answer is always both, although its worth exploring why the numbers were so far apart. Looking into this question, Carl Bialik notes that Wall Street analysts basically got caught up in emotional hype, as each one tried to outdo each other by making bolder predictions. Their mistakes were exacerbated by the use of small sample sizes, which they mistakenly extrapolated across the country. Analysts make predictions about unit sales all the time for all kinds of products, but you have to wonder how they can accurately predict the future when they can't even correctly gauge what's already happened.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: iphone, wall street
Companies: apple
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Problems...
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...and you're adding to the misinformation
Based on the first 30 hours, it's not unreasonable to think that they may have sold 450,000-500,000 units over the entire weekend which is in line with the more optimistic pundit forecasts. However, nobody but Apple knows since they haven't released the numbers.
Apple's ONLY public forward-looking number was 10 million units by the end of 2008 and that was their GOAL, not their estimate. I don't see how Apple contributed to any over-hype of the estimates.
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when is the public going to catch on? probably never.
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C - none of the above
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Re: C - none of the above
Apple encouraged the hype in order to boost the demand for the iPhone.
Stock analysts have a herd mentality, so they would tend to over or under estimate as a group.
Also -- it has been interesting that many tech stocks fall atfer earnings figures are announced, because they met estimates instead of beating them.
Personally, you could not give me an iPhone, even though I am already an AT&T customer. Trendy types and Apple fanbois will buy them, I am neither.
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Hype was there
Before AT&T took over, I was debating on switching to Cingular. Now that they are apart of A&T, I decided not to follow suit. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this mind set.
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