Or not, perhaps. This morning when stock markets opened, Apple and AT&T stock limped, rather than roared, out of the gate — with Apple prices remaining largely flat.
If you’ve been following the crazed orgamso-frenzy hype around the iPhone, and the Lalapalooza like atmosphere around the Palo Alto Apple store, you might have had a different picture in mind. Heck — I sure did.
But I think that investors (and institutional ones) are looking for harder facts to back up the hype. Namely that Jobs either did too well a job (ha ha, what a lame pun) in stocking his stores with iPhones so that there was no shortage, or that the demand was far lighter than what was actually expected — although I have no feel for how much is “light” in consumer electronics. $170 million worth of merchandise and over 500k units sold seem like a pretty robust to me.
Over the long term I actually do expect this to change for two reasons.
- The iPhone problems will be fixed (one day): Many of the issues around this first generation iPhone will be solved with other iterations of the device, namely problems with ringtones, storage size, porting phone numbers, the overall cost, and other tech issues we haven’t even heard about yet. Apple has a long history of cranking out advanced models at a nauseating clip. First-adopters with respect to the iPod can attest to this.
- Word of Mouth Will Begin To Take Over: Once iPhones are out in circulation, word of mouth will take over from the mainstream media hype. Just like the demand for Wii’s continued well past last Christmas as more and more people saw and touched it, you can bet the same thing will happen with iPhones — in spite of the price.
The interesting thing I found, of course, is the whole disconnect between the tech coverage of the iPhone and the flat stock price. Is it really because techies are first adopters who “get it” in this circumstance? Or is mainstream America wary of the hype? Or, is it really a case of the demand being underestimated? Or, perhaps, is everyone waiting for the price to fall and there to be a change to a faster kind of network?
The iPhone story hasn’t yet been fully told, I think — in fact, now that the release euphoria is over, I suspect its just begun. ;)
[yes, I do own shares of Apple]
