bootz - it's definitely relevant
yes, given Apple's market share, "MP3 players" is 80+% synonymous with "iPods". And Apple has finally, this quarter, got the full WalMart channel opened up too. It has consistently been expanding the channel, domestic and foreign.
but the Best Buy and other non-Apple retail channels are all tracked by NPD, so ironically, that's the one variable that's known by the analysts with the greatest certainty. If you're looking at this as some sort of "new" information that is not already taken into account, that would be wrong.
What we have here is monthly sales data that is decelerating faster than was previously forecast, and below the threshold guided by Apple itself for what calendar Q1 should fall off from the holiday quarter for average consumer electronics.
Keep in mind this quarter will also be boosted in one-time fashion by some channel filling that still needed to be done to "catch up" on backlog for the Nano left over from the holiday quarter.
Again, there was no reason to expect anything other than the eventual progressive saturation of end-markets, and a deceleration. It's just that when the deceleration is in progress, you never know just how low it well finally find a bottom. Just as with a declining stock price, when you're in the decline, not knowing precisely where you find "support" and level out, that unknown can be nerve-wracking. As it will be for analysts now.
When you are in an acceleration phase, it's easy for an analyst to use very large multiples (p/e, p:s, p:b, or p:ev) and feel safe. The ever enlarging expansion will "catch up" if you're a bit too aggressive. But the reverse is true in the deceleration phase. That safety blanket is removed, and the natural response is to be more conservative with the multiples use to calculate targets, etc.
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