“Apple’s iPhone missed a 1 million unit sales target and rivals are rejoicing,” Scott Moritz “reports” for TheStreet.com in an article headlined “iPhone Misses Sales Mark.”
“While the much-hyped phone helped AT&T take a big bite out of its competitors’ business, industry observers say effects are far from deadly,” Moritz “reports.” “Analysts estimate somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000 iPhones have been sold since the debut blitz started Friday evening.”
MacDailyNews Take: We would like to take this moment to point out analysts’ consensus estimates have routinely been underestimating Apple’s quarterly earnings for years, not to mention that, not too many years ago, most analysts estimated that Apple would be dead by now.
Moritz continues with his “report,” writing, “The sales goal — or so-called whisper number — both internally at Apple and on Wall Street was a nice round 1 million phones. Missing this hugely ambitious target is hardly a failure, but competitors in the wireless sector are certainly breathing a little easier.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple has not released iPhone unit sales numbers.
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
In one fell swoop, Scott Mortiz makes Perez Hilton look like Edward R. Murrow.
Moritz pulls numbers out of his arse until he hits one that’s higher than one pulled out of somebody else’s collective arse and then Scotty squats down to expel his daily column.
If this is an example of the lengths they have to go to make iPhone look like a “failure,” then Apple’s poised to dominate this market, too.
Contacts:
General Feedback, The Street.com: http://apps.thestreet.com/cms/tsc/feedback.do
Email Scott Moritz: scott.moritz@thestreet.com
Don’t feed his site with hits.
Don’t go there.
Just don’t do it.
Clearly fishing for hits. No other phone that has sold even a quarter of the iPhone sales upon release. The MS apologists are digging for anything, anything at all, to try to dismiss the obvious advantage Apple is going to have over the next couple of years.
i seem to recall, about a month ago, it would be a failure because it wouldn’t sell more than 100,000. now that it clearly has, it is a failure for not hitting a million?
i am curious, if it turns out they sold, oh, i don’t know, 1.1 million in the first week, will they say that it was a failure for not selling 10 million?
AAPL is up almost 6 at the moment (12:06 PDT, +5.91, +4.87%). Must’ve missed the memo.
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1) We don’t know how many iPhones sold (who knows how many were ordered at the Apple online store?)
2) There was no sales goal announced. A “whisper” goal is no more than a rumor.
3) Apple sold out in half (or more) of their locations with AT&T selling out everywhere. Pretty unrealistic to have a goal to sell more phones than you have.
Apparently having the greatest product launch in history is a failure. I’m betting Apple’s competitor’s wish they could “fail” so profitably.
Matters not what these ANAL…ists think. I WILL be buying an iPhone eventually. I am part of the revolution. I want a phone that runs my preferred operating system.
I hereby declare that the iPhone is a failure unless they sell one BILLION units!
This is such a bogus, pre-written story. He obviously waited to get some estimates of actual sales before deciding what his “whisper number” would be. So since the high-end sales estimate is 700,000, he filled in the “whisper number” blank with a figure of 1 million. If the high-end actual sales estimate had been 1 million, his “whisper number” would probably have been 2 or 3 million.
Psst . . . don’t drink so much at iPhone rivals’ rejoice parties!
So, we have a made up sales estimate which since it is made up thet can hardly have missed. Although we don’t know they missed it because we don’t know what they sold. Also, because they might have “missed” an imaginary figure but probably still sold a huge number of the things their “competition” can now feel slightly better because rather than being royally screwed, they’re just screwed!
Man, MDN’s take made me laugh today. Its funny most days, but today’s is just spot on.
What the heck is the significance of some fictional “whisper number”? Zero.
Analysts were saying (not whispering) 100,000 was the goal. Now that goal is clearly shattered, and the iPhone is outselling any electronic device in history, I guess it’s time to change the target # and make that a failure….
Why do people want to pretend the iPhone is a failure so badly that they are willing to look like idiots in public?
In reading “the media’s” efforts to report on Apple over the years, I have found that TheStreet, Forbes, Reuters and CNET consistently have been ignorant and pessimistic (where pessimism was not justified). On the other hand, Business Week and Fortune generally have been accurate. All the others have been hit and miss in both reporting and predicting about Apple.
Umm, most “analysts” last week predicted sales of 200,000-300,000 on opening weekend. And it seems they easily did at least 500,000, and probably more. So tell me again how Apple came in under estimates?
Just take a look at AAPL today, it’s up nearly 6%, so that should answer any questions on how successful the opening weekend of iPhone sales was.
When I saw the headline I thought sure it was Wolverton that wrote this. Nope. Sure enough there is more than one tool working at thestreet.com
Pulling numbers out of your arse is asinine……
“And I thank you”.
Looks like Scott forgot to read his own column just a few days earlier……
iPhone’s $200 Million Jackpot
By Scott Moritz
Senior Writer
6/25/2007 7:20 AM EDT
Click here for more stories by Scott Moritz
Apple’s (AAPL – Cramer’s Take – Stockpickr) iDay will put a $200 million revenue ka-ching on the end of this quarter
The temps are trained, crowd control measures are in place and the stage is all set for Friday’s debut of the huge iPhone. If Apple can pull it all off, this most orchestrated of product introductions should manage to move nearly 400,000 phones out the door on the first day.
The weird thing is that someone is (presumably) paying this tosser to come up with gob like this. Bizzaro.
Apple went from selling zero to several hundred thousand in a couple of days. Gee, they sure missed the mark all right. Whatever.
If competitors want to believe Apple isn’t a threat, let them sit back on their laurels. In time, they certainly won’t know what hit ’em.
Bank on it.
Can’t help but think that all these analyst “estimates” are only calculating the brick and mortar store sales.
I’ve heard (anecdotal) of many people who bought on-line expecting (correctly) that their local Apple/AT&T store would sell out.
I still say 2 days of iPhone trumps 8 months of Zune.
ps. Who put the anal in analyst?
Oh yeah of course, holy cow – They only sold 700,000 + iPhones falling well short of the 1 million mark. You know, it was a nice try but Apple finally failed once and for all, there’s just no hope now – We were all pulling for Apple but now they’ve fallen just short of the mark – yep its all over.
And with no exaggeration, that’s the exact logic of the article.
What of the million or so people who registered with AT&T, if they all recieved their phones by mail or some form of reservation system, we can all expect when the figure is finally announced to be in the region of 1.5 – 2 million iphones.
Factor one = 3 million iphones were shipped in to start with.
Factor two = special individuals (Mr. Wozniak et al) were to have theres delivered on Saturday by special courier.
Factor three = the sales of iphones are not going to be included with the other products and will not be announced until the time Mr. Jobs said he would.
So, unless AT&T announce how many iphones they had and how many they still have left over, we can all speculate ourselves into an early grave! Still it would be nice to know, wouldn’t it?
@dd
My favorite synonym for analyst came from MDN last year when some wise soul said analysts are really a bunch of Anal-cysts. And I think that hits the nail on the head because I’m pretty sure that’s where the majority of Anal-cysts live – in – well – you know where… So you can very well expect their collective conclusions to be thoroughly clouded.
An iPhone costs $499+ to buy and it would appear that people prefer the 8GB version, which means it’s closer to $599.
Assuming you’re a new customer or not migrating an existing plan, the running costs each month cost a minimum of $60.00, meaning that a two-year contract costs $1440.00.
In other words, the iPhone experience will cost a minimum of around $2000 over two years.
And yet people have seemingly bought over 500,000 units in three days, and it will probably beat which version of the iPod it was that got to a million units in 17 days (nano or mini, I don’t recall – it hardly matters as the entry price-point was a mere fraction of the iPhone’s at $199 and $249 respectively) so long as they sell around 40,000 units a day for the next ten days or so.
One of Microsoft’s Zune players costs $240.00 for the whole ball of wax (actually I’d prefer a ball of wax to a Zune, but that’s beside the point) and yet, despite the massive distribution and the stuffing of that channel, it has taken the thick end of 260 days to sell one million of them.
Which is the failure?
Didn’t know it was possible to be jealous of the Freak…
As it is, I’ve now had two people pull out their iPhones in my vicinity and say “I got one! I got one! Wanna see my new iPhone?”
That’s just cruel.
How many people do you think have done that with ANY other cell phone?
This is what I wrote to Steve Moronitz:
…you’re “iPhone Misses Sales Mark” article is pathetic. Apple had no sales mark, “whisper number” or otherwise. The whispering came from the media and analyists.
The best measure of “sales mark” is when you fully stock your stores and virtually sell out in just a few days.
You’re right about one thing, competitors are “breathing a little easier”…they’re all on respirators.
Where ever you are, may it rain on your 4th of July.
jg
p.s.
Please change your first name, it’s already taken by someone who’s qualified to have it.