Is Last Quarter's Massive iPhone Sales Momentum Sustainable?

Take a story written by an analyst who doesn't cover Apple and mix with obvious industry trends and what do you get. A waste of time.

With more countries selling the iPhone and the Christmas season I would be surprised if this quarter doesn't exceed the former. Apple's sales growth has continued to exceed their competition and I wouldn't bank pennies on Craig Berger.

I know a few folks who are waiting for a contract to expire so I think Bach is full of it. He just wishes that he beat Apple to the punch. I'm buying one for Christmas,.. Sales will be great and will exceed the Sep quarter with all the oversea sales even with the US economy tanking.

Good one. Everyone that wanted an iPhone already has one. They're still saying that about iPods after all these years.

I guess the exact same thing will be said about BlackBerrys. I am fairly certain, although I could be wrong, but I've heard production has been slowed by almost every manufacturer of nearly every consumer device you can name.

Started in August this year, Foxconn had ramped up production to some 800,000 iPhones a month. I don't think anyone claimed that production rate would be fixed in stone for the entire year. So if that's the rate Apple is slashing by 40%, there is still a healthy production rate remaining.

Let's put it this way, if Apple can't sell iPhones with all it's Apple retail stores in place then I think the entire smartphone handset business in general is in dire trouble for sure. I'm curious to see how well Android handsets are going to gain any traction at all if this guy is thinking iPhone growth is done for. The iPhone can reinvent itself if necessary. That's Apple's secret weapon for tapering sales.

Most probably iPhone sales will continue to be high because of the continuous waves of new and exciting applications for the phone.

On the other hand when sales drop all Apple has to do is roll out one of the capabilities so craved for such as push or copy/paste. Have you ever thought why Apple hasn't released 2.2 already? They're keeping it and developing it so that they can release it just before the Holiday Shopping Spree and boost iPhone sales. Smart people!

Let me translate Robbie Bach:

We are shitting bricks already, if Apple keeps going like the energizer bunny,we are all dead. Balmer and the other softies are praying every night, cause we can't take another quarter like this. The softies are gonna drink Kool-Aid and get embalmed by the Chief Softie. Then we ride Balmy's Comet and move to another galaxy without Apple.

Or it could mean Berger has no idea what he is talking about.

Based on his track record predicting Apple hardware orders last quarter, it looks like Berger should shut up and everyone ignore his completely inaccurate observations as shown below:

Q1 2008 Berger predicted Apple Notebooks would be DOWN 50% when they were actually UP 6.8%
Q1 2008 Berger predicted Apple Desktops would be UP 35% when they were actually DOWN 12.4%

http://bullcross.blogspot.com/2008/11/fbr-chip-analyst-craig-bergers.html
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/11/03/the-apple-analyst-who-couldnt-shoot-straight/

Ignore the idiot analyst, he is worse than useless.

-Mart