Rick Aristotle Munarriz, in an article for The Motley Fool:
An early upgrade cycle isn't necessarily unusual for Apple. When the tech giant introduced the new iPad two months ago, it came just eight months after the third generation of the iconic tablet. Apple even raised the stakes by rolling out the lower-priced iPad Mini at the same time.
However, it's clear that sooner will be better than later at a time when the market's starting to lose faith in the magnetism of the iPhone 5. Even before this week's unconfirmed report of Apple scaling back supplier orders for iPhone 5 screens, analysts performing channel checks were talking down their projections.
Misek himself is now lowering his shipment expectations for the current quarter from 48 million to 44 million. It's certainly not as bad as some of the gloomier revisions out there, but it's just one more connected pro hosing down his forecast.The hubbub began when The Wall Street Journal reported on information from Japan's Nikkei regarding dour news for the iPhone 5. The key point in the WSJ report was this line:
Apple’s orders for iPhone 5 screens for the first quarter, for example, have dropped to roughly half of what the company had planned to order, the people said.However, as noted in a rebuttal by Mark Rogowsky on Forbes:
What’s missing from that quote, however, is what Nikkei originally included and can still be found on Reuters (although no longer on WSJ): “Apple has asked Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display Co Ltd to roughly halve supplies of LCD panels from an initial plan for about 65 million screens in January-March, the Nikkei cited people familiar with the situation as saying.” And that 65 million number we know is completely absurd.65 million LCD panels is indeed absurd. A chart in an article by Dan Gallagher for MarketWatch shows a much more reasonable (but still very high) estimate of 48 million. It should be noted that this 48 million number is much closer to the "48 million to 44 million" referenced above. 65 million iPhones would be off the chart (literally).
The stock market has completely unrealistic expectations for Apple. For some reason, in the market's opinion it is not good enough for Apple to simply be a top level competitor in the marketplace, it has to dominate in order to be considered worthy.
I don't know what Apple will say in next week's quarterly results call, but I'm fairly certain that it will be something to the effect of 'we sold bunches and bunches of the iPhone 5'.