Hype Aside, These Are Amazing Days for Apple
In case you haven’t noticed, these are spectacular days for Apple. Its stock is trading at an all-time high, and its last report to the street showed a 90 percent increase in profits.
In fact, Apple’s growth has made it a challenger to Microsoft in terms of market valuation. The chart to the right shows the growth rate of their valuation and highlights Apple’s tremendous success in popularizing new categories of technology. S&P now lists Apple ahead of Microsoft on the S&P 500 Index, which uses factors beyond capitalization.
Analysts have upgraded iPad sales forecasts to 5.5 million units over its first year, with “the ultimate near-term upside primarily limited by components/supply.” Realistically, this growth rate will cool, and Apple will have growing pains. However, iTunes, iPhone, and now the iPad show the company knows how to grow in new directions.
Charting iPad sales through analytics
A month ago, industry analysts concluded that Apple’s iPad sales estimates were wrong. And so the game to guess the correct iPad sales number began. Some visited stores; others gathered sales estimates through store and credit card data.
Chitika Labs took the approach of wildlife biologists monitoring a species. They began sampling what happens in part of the Internet, and then used that data to calculate the the total population of the “new species.” See their real time iPad sales estimate here. As of a few moments ago, they estimated 969,660 units have been sold.
This is an interesting case of web traffic analytics being used to validate the market of a new technology. Watch for Apple’s Safari browser to battle for third place with Google’s Chrome. And Apple just announced its continued plans to keep Adobe Flash off the iPad and iPhone, as it continues to promote its own media viewer, QuickTime, as an alternative.
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1 Response to "Hype Aside, These Are Amazing Days for Apple"
April 26, 2010
I wonder if they are tracking the iPod to iPad conversion kits as well… http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/iphone-to-ipad-upgrade-kit.jpg 😉