The "professional" vs. "amateur" thing really gets my goat. This was never the distinction between the types of analysts until MR invented it. Anyhow...
If Apple had shipped another five million iPhones, then EPS would have been more than a dollar higher, and they'd have booked about $3B more in revenue, $1B in earnings, and beaten the street on EPS by around 10%. Everybody would have been thrilled by those results. It's the kind of upside surprise that Apple posted like clockwork, once upon a time. The fact that they didn't this time is attributable to the iPhone miss.
You are oversimplifying it. The "professional" analysts work for investment banking firms. The "amateurs" are just that (bloggers, etc).
Also, the main reason that Apple used to blow past their guidance was that they set overly conservative guidance. For the past year, they have set realistic guidance. Peter Oppenheimer said so last year at the Q1 release.
Finally, we don't know what EPS would have been had they shipped another 5 million iPhones. It depends on which model. If they shipped 5 million more total, but 10 million were the 4s and 5c, they'd have had lower margins and lower EPS.
My point is that few of the analysts, "pro" or "amateur" predicted an EPS or margin wildly different from Apple's actual results. Yet they all expected significantly more iPhone sales. That makes no mathematical sense unless they expected more of the lower-margin devices to sell. But if that's the case, then it doesn't make sense why they want Apple to go downmarket.
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Thanks for the clarification.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/27/apple-international-q1-2014/
Apple CEO Tim Cook today admitted that in its home market of North America, “we did not do as well…our business contracted year over year.”
Isn't this a concern? The one market where they do best over Android is shrinking? In a quarter where they launched some blockbuster products. What does that say about the market in general? What I read is that all future growth will come from international markets where there is more competition and fewer carrier subsidies. Also, most of the growth will be on the low-end.
It's probably a case of the North American market changing. Android didn't exactly light the world on fire, either. Remember, Verizon reported lower overall sales. They and AT&T changed their upgrade policies. And the drop in North America was more than offset by adding NTT DoCoMo. The market where Apple did best was Japan (69% of the smartphone market).
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Except that Apple admitted in the conference call that they didn't get the mix on the new models right. Not that guidance has much if anything to do with the models the analysts use to make their forecasts.
Nevertheless, Apple's overall top line and bottom line results were in line with their forecasts. Had Apple performed as they thought they might 3 months ago, then they might well have sold 55 million iPhones as the analysts wanted and had revenue and EPS virtually identical to what they actually reported. It doesn't make sense that getting the "mix" wrong but posting the same results would lead to the stock getting hammered. Perhaps the Q2-14 forecast spooked investors, but the headlines focused more on the iPhone "miss" and "flat earnings." The "flat earnings" is a red herring since Apple
predicted "flat" earnings 3 months ago. Also, "increased competition" from Samsung doesn't explain it either, since Samsung also fell well short of expectations.
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iphone ASP is down
people don't care about it except the fanboy rush for the 2 months after its released
The iPhone ASP was down a "whopping" $5 from the year ago quarter (still at $644). That's a lot better than the rest of the industry.
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you can only play accounting and shipping to channel games so long
the fact is that there are almost no new customers left for the iphone in the USA and to get people to buy it outside the USA they have to discount it very heavily
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same selection as itunes
Apple doesn't play accounting and shipping games. They made an active push to sell more phones in their own stores this year, which actually delays recognition of sales. And they deferred more revenue. So the "tricks" actually slowed down recognition.
The fact is that there are lots of potential customers in the USA, such as those waiting for larger screened phones. And the fact is that they experienced significant growth in Japan (where their market share is 69%), Latin America, and Greater China last quarter. The iPhone sells for more in China and Japan than it does in the US.
