[LINK] "Unforeseeable growth" (iPad)

Ivan Trundle ivan at itrundle.com
Thu Jan 20 13:26:21 AEDT 2011


Various people have jumped in on the shipping figures in the past year for the iPad. Now that Apple has confirmed how many were sold, many pundits were left flat-footed and flabbergasted...

Most professional analysts - who don't know much about tech, clearly - predicted from 1 million to 3.5 million, a few though possibly 5 million, and two or three went as high as 7 million.

They were all wrong.

Tech bloggers were generally more optimistic, thinking that 5 million was a fair guess, and one or two thought 8 or 9 million.

They were all wrong, too.

Apple announced that they sold 14.8 million iPads in 2010.

Horace Dediu gave it some thought:

"I sometimes use the phrase 'unforeseeable growth' to describe the kind of growth that not even the most knowledgeable observers of a market can predict. It’s usually an indicator that fundamentally transformational change is taking place.

It’s not a sufficient condition, but it’s clear that 'nobody saw it coming' is a common refrain when disruptions are seen in the rear-view mirror.

If analysts, to a man, fail, you can be sure that competitors are no wiser. Thiscollective shrug amounts to the greatest competitive advantage any entrant could ever hope to obtain."

http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/19/unforeseeable-growth-analyst-failure-on-ipad-as-indicator-of-disruptive-change/

iT

--
Ivan Trundle
http://itrundle.com ivan at itrundle.com
ph: +61 (0)418 244 259 fx: +61 (0)2 6286 8742 skype: callto://ivanovitchk





More information about the Link mailing list