More Apple pwnage

[lord of the mark]

Asher is correct, while integrated supply chain management often these days means that the manufacturer has direct access to downstream sales data for purposes of planning, it does not impact accounting.

OTOH it does seem unlikely ATT is holding alot of inventory at retail. Who holds the in transit inventory? Does ATT take ownership in China, and pay the freight? I would think Apple pays the freight, and ATT takes ownership at the US Port of Entry, or even beyond. But I'm not real familiar with electronics industry logistics.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

OTOH it does seem unlikely ATT is holding alot of inventory at retail.

Yes, especially since there is no evidence of this, other than the evidence that seems to be being pulled from someone's rectum.

[Asher]

You forgot to quote the "Asher is correct" part.

It doesn't matter if AT&T is holding them at retail or in their distribution centres. AT&T stores are being outsold 7-1 by Apple stores, and there's 1,800 AT&T stores vs far fewer Apple stores. My rectum did not provide that information, sources are quoted in this thread.

[Lorizael]

Are there numbers stating how many phones AT&T stores have gotten versus how many Apple stores have gotten? Otherwise your 7-1 bit is rather meaningless.

[Asher]

No, there aren't. No one seems to want to make those numbers public.

But, as we've said, there is also the little thing about the activation numbers being substantially lower than Apple's "sold" numbers. Large numbers are being sold to some entity and not being activated, and I think we all know these are not consumers buying the phone then not activating it. And AT&T is the only external entity Apple sells the phone to. so...

Don't you think AT&T would make very public to their shareholders how many new customers they are getting from the iPhone? AT&T either paid or otherwise sacrificed something for the 5-year exclusive deal, the shareholders would certainly want to know if it's paying off. But AT&T only released the subscriber numbers once -- and they were FAR off of Apple's "sales" numbers, and that's the last we've heard of it. I think somebody's hand got slapped...

[Ming]

Many of the phones were bought be speculators thinking that the phones would be in higher demand than the original supply (morons)... they were hoping to make a killing selling them like many did with the Wii.

[Asher]

In the end, and I think we can all agree on, sales numbers are largely meaningless. The important numbers are activation numbers. And even the biggest Apple fanboys are probably wondering why, if they were so good, AT&T is not commenting on them aside from their first initial results which tanked Apple's stock.

I think it's pretty clear that AT&T is not reporting subscriber numbers because they do not correspond to Apple's "sales" numbers. This negatively impacted Apple's stock (and presumably AT&T's as well), so those numbers are private.

[Tingkai]

So you're saying that you don't know what the activation rate is, and it is possible that it could be quite high. And your argument that the number is low is based on the idea that no news is bad news.

Isn't it much more likely that AT&T is waiting until the end of quarter to spend time, energy and money calculating activation rates.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
So you're saying that you don't know what the activation rate is, and it is possible that it could be quite high. And your argument that the number is low is based on the idea that no news is bad news.

Isn't it much more likely that AT&T is waiting until the end of quarter to spend time, energy and money calculating activation rates.

Not at all. It's trivial for them to compute such a thing -- do you think they're not tracking these on a daily basis? We do have computers now, it's probably a simple SELECT statement on a database table.

The number is low because it's been announced once already, and it was very low. Apple and AT&T both had their stock slammed the next couple days because of it. It has not been released since, and it's not because it's a herculean effort to calculate it, and it's not because they're very high.

They're not being released when they easily can, and have, been. The reason AT&T isn't releasing the activation numbers, combined with the low AT&T retail sell rate and Apple's high "sales" numbers, it should be self-evident what is going on.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Tingkai
So you're saying that you don't know what the activation rate is, and it is possible that it could be quite high. And your argument that the number is low is based on the idea that no news is bad news.

The activation rate on the first weekend was low because AT&T couldn't handle the volume of requests. Anyone who visited a mac fan forum that weekend would have known this. About a third of the regulars who bought one at one of the forums I go to had activation problems.

Isn't it much more likely that AT&T is waiting until the end of quarter to spend time, energy and money calculating activation rates.

No. It's much more likely that somewhere AT&T is keeping a huge warehouse full of unsold iPhones, while they keep ordering more and more of them. Their devious plan is to build a 1:1 scale replica of the Pyramid of Cheops using only unboxed iPhones.

Or it could be that Apple has sold a million iPhones, just like the New York Times and other major media outlets are reporting. After all, they would know since the majority of them are sold through Apple's own site and their brick and mortar stores. It's not like they are shipping them off to Wal Mart.

That's the obvious conclusion. Anything else is just a lunatic conspiracy theory, which isn't surprising given the source.

[Tingkai]

It's not as simple as clicking a command.

All sales numbers have to be doubled checked, vetted, approved by the board, etc, because of stock market regulations.

They're not going to spend the time, money or energy to do that even if they are getting 100% activation.

The initial activation numbers were for the second quarter and not reported until the regular quarterly report.

So no news is not necessarily bad news.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
The activation rate on the first weekend was low because AT&T couldn't handle the volume of requests. Anyone who visited a mac fan forum that weekend would have known this. About a third of the regulars who bought one at one of the forums I go to had activation problems.

AT&T has stated themselves the failure rate was 2%. The fact that there was a vocal minority does not mean anything. AT&T, who would know, has a concrete figure of 2% that failed.

No. It's much more likely that somewhere AT&T is keeping a huge warehouse full of unsold iPhones, while they keep ordering more and more of them. Their devious plan is to build a 1:1 scale replica of the Pyramid of Cheops using only unboxed iPhones.

Who said they kept ordering more and more of them?

Or it could be that Apple has sold a million iPhones, just like the New York Times and other major media outlets are reporting.

Apple DID sell a million phones, I'm sure. To AT&T outlets and consumers directly through the own stores. This is what their press release said, and I believe them. The problem is the assumption that "1 million sold" means 1 million consumers have iPhones in their hands is fundamentally incorrect.

That's the obvious conclusion. Anything else is just a lunatic conspiracy theory, which isn't surprising given the source.

That is the source? The realm of logic, business knowledge, and reasoning? Or AT&T, the only source who can tell us how many people are actually using these phones -- the results of which do NOT correspond with Apple's full "sold" numbers.

Critical thinking is a skill we in the sciences use, perhaps mandatory science courses would benefit you and your students.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
It's not as simple as clicking a command.

All sales numbers have to be doubled checked, vetted, approved by the board, etc, because of stock market regulations.

They're not going to spend the time, money or energy to do that even if they are getting 100% activation.

This is unequivocal nonsense. Activation numbers have nothing to do with sales numbers. You actually just proved my point -- it's harder to get SALES NUMBERS than activation numbers.

Do you understand how databases work? Let's assume you do.

When a phone at AT&T is activated, do you think this information is logged somewhere? Where? A database.

Did you know databases are designed for quick and easy data retrieval?

select Count(uid) from ActivationRecords where Phone = "iPhone"

That'll give you the # of records activated with a single phone. Of course, this won't work word for word...but I guarantee you activation data is stored in a database, and if it is, it's trivial to retrieve.

AT&T was able to pull this information easily after a couple days on the market. They did so, their stock got hammered since it was much lower than the purported "sold" numbers. Why would they do it again? They haven't.

It's trivial to do, they are not doing it. If the numbers were high, they'd only gain from this. Think about it.

[Tingkai]

Again, it's not about databases, it's about stock market regulations.

Activation numbers are sales numbers for AT&T (how many customers it has). There are rules for releasing these numbers. The activation numbers will be released in the quarterly statement, just like were in July.

There's no news because it is not end of quarter.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Again, it's not about databases, it's about stock market regulations.

Activation numbers are sales numbers for AT&T (how many customers it has). There are rules for releasing these numbers. The activation numbers will be released in the quarterly statement, just like were in July.

There's no news because it is not end of quarter.

If that were true, no one would release sales numbers except at end of quarters. Yet, they do. Apple does, even.

It's a convenient excuse, but not a valid one. Companies can and do release sales and activation figures any time they want to. They are not regulated in release of this information by the "stock market". This is, as I've said, nonsense.

If you're going to continue parroting this, you need to show me the SEC rule that prevents companies from releasing sales information except at quarter-end...