Another day, another ridiculous piece the Macalope won’t link to.
Back in April, the horny one vowed to never again link to a Business Insider piece on iPhone market share when it became obvious that Henry Blodget was simply trolling for hits.
This week’s Business Insider piece by Jay Yarrow, entitled “Putting The iPhone 4S’s 1 Million Pre-Orders In Context—Actually Not That Impressive”, continues the trend.
You might think a million iPhone 4S pre-orders is a lot. If you lack the penetrating mind of someone who sees through the Apple smoke and mirrors.
But, before getting too excited, we wanted to know if this performance is significantly better than the iPhone 4 pre-orders?
Yes.
At first, it seemed like it…
Because it is.
The iPhone 4 pre-sold 600,000 units in a day. But after doing a little bit of analysis, the answer seems to be, no.
Of course. Because at Business Insider, there’s nothing Apple can do that’s really impressive. Like sell more units than any other handset maker or take two-thirds of the profit in the industry. No, Apple doesn’t compete against other companies or even against itself. It competes against imaginary bars set by pundits.
Why should the iPhone 4S have sold better than it did, Jay?
This year Apple had a full day with no glitches.
Really? Is that right? Actually, no, it’s not right. Jay Yarrow may not have been up at midnight Pacific last Thursday trying to order an iPhone 4S, but this mythical beast sure was. If Yarrow had been up he’d know that the online Apple Store wasn’t even available until about 12:45 a.m. Pacific, and even then it was some time before it was able to fully process orders. The Macalope doesn’t know when that was, because he eventually gave up. When he woke in the morning, he found he was still unable to place an order because there was still a half-processed order stuck in the system. The Apple Store complained the existing order needed to be canceled first, but provided no means of doing that. Eventually, the brown and furry one resorted to calling AT&T directly to order the phone.
Maybe the extent of the outage wasn’t nearly as long as with the iPhone 4 launch but, long story short, Jay, you’re wrong. But that’s just the first place you’re wrong.
[Piper Jaffray’s Gene] Munster estimates 75% of pre-orders happen before noon eastern. If we were to do a comparison of 75% of this year’s orders, we’d end up with 750,000 pre-orders.
That’s another great number, but considering Apple has added 90 carriers in the past year, including Verizon, it’s actually weak.
Wow! Apple added 90 carriers in the 7 countries the iPhone 4S is currently available in?! That’s amazing!
Uh, no. Apple added a total of 90 carriers in all countries. The iPhone 4S is only currently available in seven of those countries. That’s the second place you’re wrong. The Macalope’s not familiar with how many carriers Apple has added in the other six countries, but he knows Apple’s added two in the U.S.—and it’s not like people here can instantly switch, even if they want to, because of contracts.
But, really, what difference does it make how many carriers Apple added? Where does Yarrow think new iPhone customers were going to come from, if not from adding carriers? Was the launch of the 4S going to cause them to pop out of the ground like clay soldiers? Does Business Insider apply the same “new carriers don’t count” methodology to other phones?
Granted, there’s a lot we don’t know here.
That much is obvious.
But, if you step back and look at this pre-order number, it’s roughly in-line with last year’s orders.
It’s not. It’s 66.7 fricking percent higher. Your ridiculous Jedi math tricks—which are somehow always designed to make Apple’s successes appear less successful—are bogus.
Impressive by any measure…
Apparently the title writers at Business Insider don’t bother reading to the end of the articles since it says right in the fricking title that the number was “Not That Impressive.” Come to think of it, why is the Macalope reading these pieces when the people who work for your publication aren’t even reading them?
…but not big growth.
So, 66.7 percent is not “big growth.” Boy, it sure is tough to impress Business Insider. It’s a good thing Apple doesn’t give a rip about trying to impress Business Insider.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]