“Apple could be the electronics retailer most exposed to a troubling retail trend, according to JPMorgan,” Anita Balakrishnan reports for CNBC. “Fewer cars have been parked at U.S. retailers over the past month than over the same period last year, according to satellite imagery of parking lots analyzed by Orbital Insight and JPMorgan.”
“Because Apple does so much of its annual business over the holidays, lukewarm consumer demand would impact Apple more than other hardware makers, JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall told CNBC’s ‘Power Lunch’ on Friday,” Balakrishnan reports. “‘It’s possible that consumer trend will recover and get better as the year wears on here, but if it were to be weak, that would negatively affect Apple,’ Hall said. ‘We’re not saying this is the only data point you ought to be focused on. We just think this it’s very interesting that that activity level is down year over year.'”
“To be sure, fewer drivers doesn’t necessarily mean fewer buyers, as shoppers continue to move online. This year, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw record-setting revenue, lifted by online sales,” Balakrishnan reports. “[On Black Friday], an Apple Watch was sold every 13 seconds and an iPhone 7 was sold every 30 seconds in the U.S. on eBay, for instance… Though most analysts expect iPhone 7 sales to rise, Hall said that JPMorgan expects handset sales overall to fall 11 percent compared to last year. Personal computers are even more at risk, and could also see a disproportionate impact from a shopping slowdown, Hall wrote.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Pap.
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines remains soundly unbroken here.
Even if a particular data point were factual it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business… There is just an inordinate long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on. Apple CEO Tim Cook, January 23, 2013
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RK” for the heads up.]
