‘Disappointing’

Business Insider is all over today’s big story that Apple’s opening weekend sales for the iPhone 5 were “disappointing”. Nicholas Carlson proves it, with charts:

This is a very disappointing number. It’s below top Apple analyst Gene Munster’s estimate of 6 million to 10 million.

Gene Munster, of course, has a spotless record. Especially regarding iPhone opening weekends.

Worse, it indicates that growth may be slowing at Apple.

Growth of what? Consumer demand? That’s certainly what Carlson is implying, but we don’t know that. There are no unsold iPhone 5’s. You can’t measure demand when supply is constrained. Pre-order one right now and you get a “3-4 weeks” shipping estimate. The only growth that we know has slowed is Apple’s ability to make more new iPhones available on day one. They’ve made more available for the opening weekend than ever before but still couldn’t (or, perhaps, chose not to) make enough to meet demand. This is not a difficult economics problem.

★ Monday, 24 September 2012