True, July sales are based on one data point (ZDnet). While that data point suggests July was higher than any month from Q3, let's say they're wrong. Even though the *average* Q3 quarter came in at about 212,000, let's say that July was terrible w/ only 180,000 total sales.
Great. Now let's take the low August estimate of 109% growth. That means August unit sales were still 376,200! If September is the same (i.e., demand falls off enough to offset the impact of more days to sell the iMac), then we have quarterly unit sales of 932,400! That's higher than Eric's estimate and high enough to elicit a massive investor response on October 15.
Hence, I don't need to tell you what kind of numbers happen when one uses the calculated (from the single data point) July sales number. 1 million units is clearly a possibility.
Andrew
PS--Computerware's 1,800 August computer sales is a small sampling. Therefore, the 250%+ growth represented by it should be taken with a grain of salt. However, this merely indicates that individual chains/stores results are NOT out of line of the high growth rates represented by the larger studies. |
