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Taking Inventory Of Today's Apple Chatter

This article is more than 7 years old.

The day began with the usual negativity around Apple with Rosenblatt once again coming out with a negative piece on Apple given the analyst there has a Neutral on the shares and thus was looking for something to trumpet that bearish rating and accompanying $102 price target.

According to his research, iPhone sales in China were down 6% in November and that he expect sales will continue to trend down given what he says are $50 per unit discounts being offered by retailers in that country. He adds that iPhone7 Plus supply is catching up and sales of iPhone 6/6S "continue to be weak." He concludes by saying that investors should not be misled by reports that component orders are rising because he claims those orders are for iPads instead of iPhones.

It would seem that the Rosenblatt analyst read the report from Credit Suisse yesterday where the analyst there said that his "supply chain checks from Asian team" indicated that iPhone sales are strong.

Another negative report this morning was from OTR which repeat the same old tired part line of China weakness.

Then there was the crazy (if true) report from an obscure website that says that according to its sources, the globally anticipated iPhone 8 (assuming thats what Apple will call it) will be just a slightly tweaked version of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus and will be called the iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus. The site states that there will not be a new iPhone at all next year. If that is true, it should get an award for the scoop of the year. I think its ridiculous and a pathetic attempt to get its name out there which is why I chose not to link the article.

So, were there any positives you ask given my title to this article?

Phil Schiller, Apple Senior VP of worldwide marketing, tweeted the following this morning:

"Philip SchillerVerified account ‏@pschiller November 2016 was a record breaker for the #AppStore - the highest monthly sales ever in App Store history!"

Not too shabby although I must say that information is not a needle mover in the short run given that app store sales are still a small portion of overall revenues albeit fast growing. Still a positive, nonetheless.

Small portion of overall revenues or not, I like the fact that maybe Apple has finally decided to publicly update information about how things are going. Small progress reports if you will. Hopefully the pattern continues.

Along the same lines, yesterday, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, sent an email, responding to the negatively slanted IDC report on the Apple Watch, that clarified the fact that Apple Watch sales have been "off the charts." Many chose to view that as selective disclosure by Tim Cook however in reality it is far from that. Reuters was the first that had the IDC story thus it made sense that the clarification on how strong Apple Watch sales actually were went to the same news outlet.

So, that was the second bit of positive news albeit again a tiny one given Apple Watch sales are an even smaller needle mover than the App store revenues.

Finally, trading desk chatter today is that Apple is in discussions with movie studios over a deal over possible early movie rentals. That is a content deal and if true could be potentially a huge needle mover although thus far it is just trading desk chatter.

(Long aapl, long and short aapl options)

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