THE HORROR: Bloody SLAB sales slash fest forecast for 2013 Just days after chopping sales forecasts for the PC market, analysts at IDC have taken the knife to shipment estimates for fondleslabs. Around 1.7 million fewer devices are expected to find a loving home this year. Slabs are now under fire from larger smartphones, said IDC, but it is also expecting wearable web-surfing devices …
I'm sure that IDC are excellent at counting beans, but ISTM that their predictions aren't any more accurate than those of any other informed observers. I suppose it would be too much to hope that the meeja would bite the hand that feeds them ready-to-eat news bites, and run a retrospective assessment of these forecasts?
............... a minute fraction of the margin of error."
Indeed, nothing shows more clearly that there are few people more unscruplous and dishonest than those who feel an overwhelming need to attract public attention with regard to their opinions. In that sense the resemblance between analysts, single-issue obsessives and politicians is striking.
"this sales volume still represents year-on-year growth of nearly 58 per cent"
Only 58%? Tablet sales are clearly about to drop off a cliff. Analysts, don't you just love 'em? They make some (earlier) insanely optimistic prediction and when they later realise that these overblown expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled they start doing headless chicken impersonations howling "the sky's falling in". What a bunch of expletives deleted.
Headline says fewer will be sold when it is the new PREDICTION that has been lowered compared to the old one. The actual sales is still predicted to be up by almost 58 percent.
Minus 1,7 million says the headline. I get the difference between 229.3 million and 227.4 million to 1.9, so I predict, nay, state that 200 000 tablets have gone missing in this melange of fact and fiction.
@Bernard
Usual throwaway line - how do you tell a PR person is lying .... moving lips.
I have to brief PR people for my company on our tech, products and services - and the fun and games trying to get them to understand the nuances in the first place and then get them to transcribe it to the 'message' is, well fun and a game.
Of course whatever hits the streets in whatever media form has a normalized random chance of being truthful.
So the idea of getting them to understand statistics, variance and so on is just a null proposition.
Just remember that "analysis" is a portmanteau of "anal" and "lysis".
Which reminds me of the wise words of Jack Handey:
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Basically, it's made up of two separate words — "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
Nope, same thing with me. I rarely replace anything, unless the replacement is cheaper than hell, or the item being replaced is broken. Example, I just replaced nook color with nook HD+. Color still works, but could buy HD+ for $115 including case. I have a hard time replacing stuff that works well enough, so desktop is still core 2 duo, with 17" 4:3 screen.
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