Apple CEO blames rumor-mill for underwhelming iPad sales
On Friday, Apple its fourth quarter earnings report.
The good news: Revenue is up 24 percent, and iPhone sales are soaring 鈥� Apple unloaded聽26.9 million iPhones in Q4, a 58 percent jump from the same time last year. The not-so-good news: Apple sold 14 million iPads during the last quarter, which is obviously a pretty hefty number, and up 14 percent from Q4 of 2011, but somewhat short of the 17 percent by many analysts.聽
Summary: Apple is selling a lot of iPads, just not as many iPads as Wall Street would have liked.
So what's to blame for the discrepancy? Well, in an earnings call yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook a finger at gossip-mongers.
"Customers delay purchases of tablets due to new product rumors," he said. "These intensified in August and September. Some was anticipated but some we wished wouldn't occur but it did."
The "new product," in this case, of course, is the iPad Mini, which was unveiled earlier this week. Cook clearly believes that many Apple fans put off purchasing a third-generation iPad, and decided to wait for the iPad Mini instead.聽
Alternative theory: the third-generation iPad, even with its "extraordinarily sharp" Retina Display, just wasn't enough of a re-envisioning of the iPad to attract a large swath of new users.聽
Not that it's all doom and gloom.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal,聽Brian Marshall, a technology analyst at ISI Group, suggested that investors take a wide-angle view.
"The investment community tends to get 鈥榳rapped around the axle鈥� on tertiary details and fails to forget the 'big picture,' " Marshall said. "Demand for Apple products is much greater than current supply."聽
For聽more tech news, follow us on聽.
