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Mar 17, 08 - 04:53 pm Comment from: 7over

Inside, Outside Upside Down.

Is anybody else getting sick of this '10 million iPhones in 2008' deal? The media and the bloggers seem to be completely obsessed with it. It seems to be a lost fact that the iPhone is doing really well and will continue to do so. I can just see it now....December 28th 2008, and Apple has sold 'only' 9.5 m, and the bashers go to work....

Pranced?

Mar 17, 08 - 05:07 pm Comment from: Journo

"Those nice bears..."

LOL!

Mar 17, 08 - 05:08 pm Comment from: DLMeyer

This is an "analyst"? The SDK may be important for continued growth, but "critical"? Seriously? As for the differences between ActiveSync and Blackberry's service ... doesn't "better" usually win out?
The things mentioned as already available on other phones are merely minor blockages that can be removed, if needed. It isn't that Apple can brag about this or that "killer app" so much as the Win ME and RIM folk will no longer be able to proclaim their "killer apps". Thus, it's less a question of "making the iPhone more attractive" as one of "removing impediments".
As for "the iPhone becoming standard issue", I don't know if that was ever in the plan. Not every company issues cell phones to employees, or at least not to most of them. This doesn't mean the employees won't be able to use an iPhone THEY own to access the Enterprise mail and such.
Dave

Hmmmmm.
Uhhhhhhh.






Speechless.

Mar 17, 08 - 05:12 pm Comment from: Noodles Noodlemann

Uh, I just have trouble taking anything seriously from a dude named "Toni". I know it's probably short for Antonio but still.

I should have said that while I'm tired of hearing about it, I believe 10 million iPhones will be sold this year. The top brass wouldn't continue to stand by it if they weren't very sure of that number. I'm thinking they may have some information in their hip pocket that gives them extra confidence...

Sacconaghi's Ulterior Motive:

To talk down the stock he's shorted without getting investigated by the SEC.

throw all the pot shots at this guy you want, but toni is a very good analyst. i disagree with him on this issue, though. funny responses on this site, as always.

@Scheduler

It's a great product - suck it slow - you'll find it tastes good. I don't care if it is 10m in march of 2009 - because I know it will be 20m after that... and then 30m etc.

Regarding small vs. big businesses: 95% of businesses in America are "small". So sounds like a good start as a target to me....

@ Scheduler says: "Wow, Iphone. Less than 1% of the market in a year and 1/2..."

You are dismissing Apple's goal of gaining 1% of market share as unimpressive. There are 1 Billion phones on the market. The vast majority of them are subsidized and provided free or at little cost. The iPhone is a high end, extremely high margin product. Selling a $400 phone when it is competing against free is, in fact, very impressive.

People often obsess over market share. But it is profits - not market share - that matters. I believe that HP sold ten times as many computers as Apple did last year but netted only twice as much profit. Ask any business which they would rather have - high volume and low margins or low volume and high margins and their answer would be unanimous. Give me the business that sells less units and makes me greater profits.

Stop obsessing over market share. The goal is to make money. And Apple is making tons of money from the iPhone.

You guys don't like this guy....

Wait 'til y'all read Mac|Life's review of the MBA.

Just my $0.02

It's interesting - and hilarious - to read posts and "articles" by folks such as "Scheduler" and this Sacconaghi..

Every time they type a word they show their ass and lack of intelligence, knowledge and lack of understanding of the market..

CR

The 8GB iPhone was already the 3rd most popular smartphone in 2007, and it was only available for half the year. Not even taking into account the upcoming SDK or the price drops at the end of last year (which weren't available all last year, but obviously will be all this year), it's on quite a trajectory. If the iPhone does in fact become the #1 smartphone by the end of 2008, which it very well may, you can hardly say it's "not a big deal".

Since almost everyone but this research group don't really have a problem with Apple's 2008 iPhone prediction, let's assume that the iPhone will in fact hit 1% world marketshare by the end of this year. It wasn't even competing against non-smartphones, which RIM doesn't sell either, and it won't even have been available in all countries, so 1% total would be rather amazing. Still, look at a more relevant number, like "US Smartphone marketshare", and you will find that it has already gone from 0% to over 28% of the US smartphone market (at the beginning of Februrary), meaning it's been growing at a rapid pace of over 3% a month, WITHOUT any SDK. By the end of 2008, at this rate, it may well be over 50%, what with the introduction of the mobile industry's most powerful SDK.

The iPhone's nothing to sneeze at.

Mar 17, 08 - 05:57 pm Comment from: R

It's not even midyear. Predictions about sales volume before the sdk comes out is pure speculation-- and a nice way to pad empty white space real reports might otherwise fill.

iPhone is a big success and will get much bigger. I don't care what predictions are-- as long as it makes money and becomes THE mobile platform others try to emulate, that's goo enough. In reality, this is entirely under-shooting what will happen. In fact, iPhone is going to take over, much like iPod did.

Just sayin'.

Mar 17, 08 - 05:59 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

I have personally been involved in 4 iPhone purchases this last week. Saturday, my friend attempted to buy a 16 Gig for his wife's b-day. Well he had to get it at an AT&T;store, because all four Apple stores here in Houston where completely out of that model. So, to me, this seems like there is plenty of demand. Apple keeps adding countries to the list at a slow but steady pace.
I might be blinded by my own small observations, but I think Apple is going to exceed the 10 million mark.

NOTHING is SURE... who can just tell such b...it?
Existence is MADE of uncertainty from the beginning to the end... period.

Sorry, I forgot to mention it, but of course the recent introduction of the 16GB iPhone will also to some extent help 2008 sales, of course, in addition to the 2007 trajectory.

Mar 17, 08 - 06:09 pm Comment from: Anonymous©

I'm waiting for Prince Mclean or Daniel Eran Dilger to rip this SackeyHackey another one.

Mar 17, 08 - 06:14 pm Comment from: ken1w

Entrance into enterprise is a great move, but the 10 million units in 2008 goal will be met with or without overwhelming demand from enterprise customers.

Mar 17, 08 - 06:15 pm Comment from: Spark

The data on cell phone sales from which the 10 million figure was derived was from 2006. It is possible that the demand for cell phone could be less in 2008. Apple could see 1% of 2008 cell phone market with fewer than 10 million phones. So which is more important to Apple? Garnering 1% of the market or selling 10 million units? They keep using the same goals interchangeably, yet they aren't measured the same way. I suspect that the 10 mil number is the more important, but a serious global recession could easily impact the size of the market this year.

Bernstein....Still doesn't get it! sdk=business users, this in addition to new worldwide adoption of the iphone = $$$ = 10m iphones.

Mar 17, 08 - 06:28 pm Comment from: KingMel

"...but that it won't necessarily make the iPhone more attractive to enterprise users. 'We note that many mobile enterprise applications likely to be available on the iPhone (such as Salesforce.com) are already available for other wireless devices,' he wrote."

The lack of logic is astounding. The iPhone WILL become far more attractive to corporate users with the addition of (even better) push email, etc. Just because some of that functionality may already be on other products (such as Blackberry) doesn't mean that people won't jump to the iPhone when it offers comparable or better functionality in those areas on top of its leading capabilities in web browsing, etc.

It is truly easy to be a doubter. But if you can't justify your skepticism, then its just another unfounded opinion. And we all know what those are worth...

I'm personally offended that a miniscule amount of the money that I spend eventually feeds this guy's paycheck.

"It's not even midyear."

Midyear?!?! It's not even first quarter!

According to everybody here and MDN, Apple has stated that the quest for 10 Million iPhones started January 1st, 2008, and will end December 31st, 2008.

Thus, we have no idea how far along Apple is to it's goal. Everything before January 1st, 2008, doesn't count and Apple has yet to report any sales figures whatsoever for the iPhone that would count. I imagine they will do so at the end of this fiscal quarter, which is the end of March.

Therefore, any speculation--for or against--is just that: Speculation.

Crum reports, "He said that the biggest stimulus to iPhone sales will probably be a price cut, or new models with lower prices than current devices."

Typical Wall Street "research". Bleed yourself to move product, yeah that's the answer. What part of DEATH don't they understand?!?

The SDK only needs to enable one killer app. The market will do the rest.

Mar 17, 08 - 06:54 pm Comment from: ron

Sacco - what?

Yes the SDK is 'critical' but not for the reasons these short-sighted ones think. It is not about creating yet more silly 'smartphone' apps, the world needs fewer of those, not more. The SDK is for developing real apps to run on hand-held computers, some of which will for a while have a mobile telephone tacked on to them until such time as everyone laughs at such silly, clunky and crippled devices.

@ Scheduler:

The 1% figure is for the total mobile phone market, which includes the cheap freebie handsets given away to Go phones and others sold at Wal-Mart.

The iPhone already has 28% of the smartphone market. That is a much better yardstick by which to measure iPhone success. If you looked at Blackberry's total mobile phone market penetration, it would be very low as well. Basic mobile phones greatly outsell smartphones, because they are much cheaper and because most people don't need or won't pay for a smartphone.

@Falkirk

I agree with you, high volume and low margins is the way to go if its achievable.

The thing is that MDN has repeteadly talked about an upcoming "bloodbath" and how laughably low the 10-mil-in-year-2008 goal is.

It's as if MDN expected tenths of millions to be sold in 2008, the iPhone is NOT doing that well in Europe, I would be surprised if Q1 sales (combined) in France/England/Germany would be more than 350k, which is ok - but not great.

I think the problem is that iPhone hasnt reached massadoption rate, Macfans has bought it but now many ppl here in Europe are waiting for the 3G iPhone, for reduced prices (regarding the whole phone package over 1-2 years) etc.

C'mon Steve, stop being greedy, hurry up with that iPhone in my country too. I dont want to wait for year(s) before I can get the friggin phone:P

Given that the primary iPhone market thus far is the USA and that the USA is only about 4.5% of the world population, 1% share looks pretty good to me.

Is it me or does anyone find that more rectal orfices are visiting MDN lately. Why would I waste my time going around to PC forums and spout unsubstantiated nonsense and call them fanboi's just to try and get a rise out of them?

Can it be that I do something more constructive and mature with my time?

Nah!

...eat feces and expire you PC poo-poo heads!

Nice fanboy logic there. I'm sure they'll sell 3 times more iPhones in China as they have in America.

“People often obsess over market share”

But a phone that has 1 % of the market isn’t really a game changer and far from being a bloodbath I doubt there competitors would really notice if they lost a combined 1 % of their market share.

As for the smart phone argument todays smart phones are tomorrows giveaways. Smart phones will only be significant in the market when they’re widely accepted and by that time Apple’s going to be competing with the giveaways.

Prediction is extremely hard.

Bear Stearns predicted this on Dec 6, 2007:
"We're raising our CY08 target from $243 to $249 (price of an 80GB iPod classic)," Neff writes.

MacDailyNews Take: The season of fake Apple discontent is over. Time to make some money! (AAPL 189.95)

Today AAPL is 126.73 and Bear Stearns is out of business. MDN is still going strong in the analysis/commenting business.

Mar 17, 08 - 09:52 pm Comment from: silverhawk

@Falkirk
Glass half-empty dude? You must be the hit of the party.

Tell Moto about about the loss of market. Why are other set makers scrambling to come up with a iPhone clone? Check out the the HTC lately?

The buggy whip market has changed as well. Your process will take some time however, if ever.

@silverhawk

“Why are other set makers scrambling to come up with a iPhone clone?” Just like Microsoft has been scrambling to catch up to Apple over the last 20 years, hasn’t seemed to hurt their profits has it?

Can you imagine Dell, HP and Sonny worrying about a new comer that took 1 % of the laptop market? It doesn’t matter if that 1 % is the top of the line, it’s only a handful of sales.

“The buggy whip market has changed as well. Your process will take some time however, if ever.” That’s right drawing an analogy between buggy whip manufacturing and the cell phone industry is a really good idea. I know the current phones are still trying to catch up to my top of the line analog brick phone I got 10 years ago.

"It's not even midyear. Predictions about sales volume before the sdk comes out is pure speculation"

Even more than that, predictions about the sales before the second quarter earnings report are simply asinine.

-jcr

Mar 18, 08 - 07:34 am Comment from: NavyTim

Listen: Apple will hit the 10M mark just from the Salem, NH store alone. When they are in stock, the gift card jockeys who decide that waiting in line for '5 ifoam' is time better spent than an ESL course. If 1000 came in, 1000 will be sold. Between Boris "Smirnoff" Zblinksky and the China Syndrome, the operatives have the US "export laws" greeted with a big FU. It's amazing what how long some people will wait in line to make $30 dollars...

"Ask any business which they would rather have - high volume and low margins or low volume and high margins and their answer would be unanimous."

Actually not so. Companies decide where they want to be in the market. If a market is going to be a commodity market long term you want high volume and low margins, not to be the niche product, low volume, high margins that eventually gets squeezed out.

Apple is trying the strategy of being that niche player in the already commodity cellphone market. Will that work out well? probably not. it'll probably just cause everybody else to lift their game so the "free" phones are close enough to an iPhone.

to sell 1% of the global handset market in 2008 apple has to sell 13 million phones. (probably 1,3 billion handsets will be sold in 2008), i would be surprised if they can do that. but besides a few analysts no one really cares: 8 million or 13 million = tons of cash.

Mar 18, 08 - 09:48 am Comment from: Ampar

Sacconaghi is Italian for giant bag stuffed with imitation leather recliners.

it's funny that all you guys can sit here and hide behind your screen names and throw insults at this analyst. i bet these comments would be different if you had to post your name, email address, and home address. and i still believe he is wrong, i just respect what he has to say as ONE opinion.