Moon,
Apple results spur price target cuts, shares fall 9 percent
Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:02am EST
( Reuters) - Weaker-than-expected holiday sales of Apple Inc's iPhone reinforced fears that it is losing its
dominance in smartphones, driving its shares down 9 percent in premarket trading and drawing another
round of stock price target cuts. and
"We think Apple is losing the screen-size wars," Misek said, noting that demand was moving away from the
iPhone's 3.5-inch and 4-inch screens to screens of 5 inches offered by rivals such as Samsung Electronics
Co Ltd, HTC Corp and Nokia Oyj.
Misek is a top-rated analyst for the accuracy of his earnings estimates for Apple, according to Thomson
Reuters StarMine.
Apple said it shipped a record 47.8 million iPhones in the December quarter, but this trailed the average
analyst forecast of 50 million units. To me, what is both funny and sad is how bad the reporting really has gotten. Essentially, Apple hit the analysts guidance on everything except Macs. They were short 300 million on revenue and were 30 cents better on earnings. The writer of this piece is just running with the herd instead of looking at the actual numbers and then deciding for themselves. And I thought that Apple hit the analysts averageiPhone number right at 47.8 million.
In the second clipped piece, Apple should take advice from analysts that mostly don't have a clue. I am not debating whether Apple should or shouldn't do a larger/smaller/cheaper phone but I find it funny that analysts that cannot even do their own job well at forecasting telling Apple what it should or shouldn't do.
Tough day today for most here. Good luck in the longer term.
Neal |
