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We see this over and over - People guess how many iPhones Apple is selling, and predict a big problem. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/ipho

• coralreef 9y ago
  In the iPhone X's case its not analysis on sales, its leaked rumors of production cuts.
  • SG- 9y ago
    and this happens every year as they always cut them down after the initial major release.
  • beat 9y ago
    They probably put together a production cut plan just in case (as they should), and then someone finds out about it and assumes that because they made a plan to do a thing, that they're going to do a thing. Popular thinking can't really wrap its head around risk management.
    • MBCook 9y ago
      The normal Apple analysis people/sites have been discussing this. You can run into things where Apple likes to have multiple suppliers, so maybe they decide to cut their order with supplier A by 50% because they don’t think they’re doing well enough where they can get a better price somewhere else. Supplier A talks to a friend in the media and all of a sudden the story is that Apple has a big problem because their new phone isn’t selling. What no one is saying (possibly because as we all know Apple like secrecy and repolish them) is that supplier B had a 30% increase in orders from Apple, or supplier C is now coming online when they weren’t involved before. Since we don’t have the whole picture, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on outside of effectively one rumor. Or it could be stock manipulation.
  • melling 9y ago
    What are the actual numbers? They added a new product: a high-end phone. Maybe they aren’t selling as many of the expensive product that they weren’t selling the year before? The simple fact that they had no idea how it would sell could mean they asked suppliers to be ready at the high-end of expectations.
• dsacco 9y ago
  There are people who successfully predict how many e.g. iPhones are being sold. But they’re not publishing this information, because it’s very valuable. They’re mostly selling it to hedge funds and market research firms (or they work internally at those companies). In other words: when you see someone publish a “forecast” that a particular company’s product isn’t doing well, the analysis is usually flawed. If it weren’t flawed, the market price of the analysis probably wouldn’t be “free.” I’m speaking from experience - I know a quantitative researcher who successfully forecasted Apple’s iPhone sales to a fraction of a percent a few years ago (very clever method!), and I’ve personally done this with Tesla model sales/production.
  • krrrh 9y ago
    Horace Dediu at asymco.com has also consistently made pretty accurate predictions for Apple and publishes a lot of his reasoning for free, if anyone is interested in going beyond the mainstream financial press, which over-relies on sketchy reports from the supply chain.
  • csjr 9y ago
    Makes sense! I would love to hear more about that method (if it's something you can talk about)
    • icefox 9y ago
      Couldn't you use the German tank problem to solve these? For Tesla auto sales couldn't you just look at tesla vin numbers? For iPhones, sample mac address's?
      • dsacco 9y ago
        > For Tesla auto sales couldn't you just look at tesla vin numbers? You’ve definitely intuited some of the method, yes :). The rest of it entails: 1) how to get all VINs both authoritatively and legally, 2) how to distinguish between valid VINs and assigned VINs, 3) how to reverse the actual revenue projection from the set of all assigned VINs. The first requirement is the hardest. Tracking self-reported VIN delivery from users isn’t rigorous enough. You could use an endpoint and scrape from it, but how would you do it legally and reliably? The second requirement is also difficult. Assuming you’ve found an authoritative source for valid VINs, how do you distinguish which VINs are assigned? Once you have those two, the third requirement is mostly straightforward. You can implement your own VIN decoder using public NHTSA documentation, map each VIN field to options and prices across models, and track sequential VINs using the distinguishing method of requirement 2 on the data you’re getting from requirement 1. Naturally, there are other ways to do this that don’t involve VINs at all.
• nodesocket 9y ago
  Analysts do this tactic of pushing negative news (rumors and it snowballs) waiting for the stock to take a hit, then upgrading the stock later. This primary allows big money (funds) to buy stocks at lower prices capitalizing on "value".
  • mertd 9y ago
    It is also a good way to get yourself into jail since it is illegal.
• eksemplar 9y ago
  Yes, and a lot of it confidently arrived in the month leading up to these actual numbers. Tons of money exchanged hands on the stock market because of it.
• jacksmith21006 9y ago
  iPhone unit sales declined YoY and Apple reduced Q2 guidance by 10% below consensus. Shares are down from a high of $180 and pre-hours this morning flat. So consistent with what analyst were saying. It was not about Q1 but about Q2 guidance.