Text 14747, 55 rader
Skriven 2006-12-15 12:14:36 av RobertB (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 14727 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: The great iTunes panic of 2006
==========================================
From: RobertB <missinglink@cloud9.net>

In article <458184a9$1@w3.nls.net>,
 "Rich Gauszka" <gauszka@dontspamhotmail.com> wrote:

> http://blogs.forrester.com/devicesmedia/2006/12/itunes_sales_ar.html
>
> iTunes sales are NOT plummeting! Press credibility, on the other hand . . .
> [Josh] What an interesting couple of days it's been. What follows is a case
> study in how information -- and misinformation -- spreads on the Net.
>
> We put out a simple little report about iPods and iTunes based on credit
> card transactions and publicly stated Apple data. And for those who aren't
> Forrester clients, I blogged the highlighs. In case you are wondering, we
> ran the report by Apple, and they declined to comment.
>
> Since then:
>
> - The New York Times ran a little fairly balanced pieced on the research.
> This got us on the media's radar screen. Then . . .
>
> - A UK outfit called The Register and Bloomberg decided to dive in and
> highlight one finding of the report -- that iTunes sales had dropped in the
> first six months of this year. We got treated to wonderful headlines about
> iTunes sales "collapsing" and "dropping" and "plummeting" and so on. Now for
> the record, iTunes sales are not collapsing. Our credit card transaction
> data shows a real drop between the January post-holiday peak and the rest of
> the year, but with the number of transactions we counted it's simply not
> possible to draw this conclusion . . . as we pointed out in the report. But
> that point was just too subtle to get into these articles.
>
> - Apple's stock actually did plummet -- 3%. I started getting calls from
> hedge fund managers. Apple's spokesman called and, although they refuse to
> go on the record with any facts, they're clearly upset. And I also heard
> from the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, Financial
> Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, thestreet.com, etc. At this point I was
> trying to get people off the "65% drop" idea and onto some of the more
> interesting ideas in the report, with mixed success.
>
> Now, you can't unring the bell. But I will try to focus you on the truth
> here, which is this: iTunes sales are leveling off, the Journal did an
> article about it last Friday with data from Soundscan. Apple is not in
> trouble -- it makes its money mostly from iPods, and iTunes is just a way to
> make that experience better. It's the music industry that has to worry,
> since the $1 billion a year or so from iTunes, globally, doesn't nearly make
> up for even the drop in CD sales in the US, which are now down $2.5 billion
> from where they were.

Yeah, I saw the Register piece. The whole thing is a bit mind boggling. I don't
use the iTunes store, so I don't really care one way or the other, but I get
the impression that these analyst services are often blowing smoke out of their
butts.

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