Thursday, June 17, 2010

Apple randomizes web order numbers

Sometime around the middle of May I started receiving submissions of web order numbers that were out of sequence. After a major batch of contributions from June 15, I've concluded Apple has now successfully randomized these in such a way that I no longer can derive (nor estimate in any meaningful way) a count of web orders from any two or more numbers and date-time values, as I've done for 5+ years.

Here's a scatter plot of the contributions for June 15:


Here's a frequency histogram including a few more web order numbers from before and after those shown above:


And here's the raw data, in case anyone somehow mines some pattern out of it:
Timestamp(PDT)  Web number  Contributor
--------------  ----------  ------------------
05/09/10 06:11  W299136XXX  macnmaine
05/10/10 03:52  W2477497XX  michelc
05/10/10 05:48  W2293963XX  CdnPhoto
05/14/10 15:19  W2916900XX  Ghh008
05/16/10 17:40  W215139XXX  macnmaine
06/02/10 11:55  W2769957XX  centex
06/06/10 15:49  W292153XXX  macnmaine
06/14/10 18:58  W2856025XX  centex
06/15/10 09:30  W263697XXX  cotten999
06/15/10 12:51  W2462125XX  hltr
06/15/10 13:35  W2771715XX  The Scorpion Files
06/15/10 14:53  W2436969XX  braney
06/15/10 15:55  W2736754XX  DSO
06/15/10 16:22  W2670179XX  parkslope2006
06/15/10 16:32  W2755113XX  DSO
06/15/10 17:07  W216414XXX  nontekkie
06/15/10 17:12  W2488284XX  $ Bill Yall
06/15/10 18:00  W2831010XX  jamesd
06/15/10 19:19  W2111939XX  centex
06/15/10 19:22  W2659075XX  cranjo
06/15/10 19:29  W2705339XX  tradervic
06/15/10 19:30  W2562092XX  cranjo
06/15/10 19:31  W2357239XX  sensiblethoughts
06/15/10 20:00  W219790XXX  organicandnoworms
06/15/10 23:29  W2940290XX  fhatta
06/16/10 09:46  W2300058XX  Probe

This is unfortunate, but of course it won't prevent me from continuing to analyze Apple's business. I have to thank Apple for letting me get away with it for 5+ years, but most of all I'd like to thank all the fellow AAPL investors for their voluntary contributions to this effort. And Steve "Caligula" Evans for coming up with the idea in the first place and compiling those very early numbers.
But now it's time to fly solo, and hope I don't disappoint. Third quarter final estimates in a couple of weeks. They look great but I'm still tinkering with things, and we'll surely get some more info on iPhone 4 sales over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

10 comments:

Protonk said...

Shame they closed your loophole! My guess (hope) is that they had security in mind. The recent AT&T foul up with UDIDs would seem to make Apple's move prescient.

hltr said...

Insensitive bastards ;-)

Anonymous said...

Without all the digits, any further attempt to mine the data would be a waste of time. Who's to say the right-most 2 or 3 digits are still the least significant.

Anonymous said...

Deagol,

Thanks for the years of excellent work. Your work has been greatly appreciated by AAPL investors like me. We'll still keep an eye out for your estimates.

JavaJack said...

Unfortunate, I am always checking into your blog hoping for another piece of real news about AAPL. I've sure enjoyed your analysis over the years and will continue to watch for your quarterly estimates. Thanks so much.

Jack Tunnicliffe

Protonk said...

Ah yes, it slipped my mind, but thank you. I hope you'll be able to keep doing some of what you have been doing.

Anonymous said...

That sucks. I just discovered this site about 4 months ago. Oh well, I guess I was late to the party.

Good work though.

Daniel Tello said...

Anon, I'm definitely NOT done! Stick around, the AAPL party is just starting.

Roy from San Jose said...

Was out of the country, just got back, so couldn't post sooner. Congratulations on yet another outstanding piece of analytical work that puts the so called experts with all their staffs and resources to shame.

The $18 bln guidance was really an eye opener - I didn't see a need for that at all; why do you suppose they did that? To offset drop in gross margins?

I don't understand why the stock is a rut... AAPL should be over $300 and steadily climbing up from there.

Thanks again for all your hard work, and look fwd to the next Q.

Roy

Daniel Tello said...

Roy, thanks for the kind words.
I'm assuming the $18b is them still being conservative.
I don't understand either, but I think patience will pay off. Do you remember what triggered the 80 pt rally from Feb to Apr?