Zach Epstein tries to write the one story all year that violates Betteridge’s law:
Has the iPhone Peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S Seen Outselling iPhone 5
UBS analyst Steve Milunovich trimmed his estimates for Apple’s fiscal 2013 and fiscal 2014 years on Thursday evening. He also dropped his price target on Apple shares to $700 from an earlier target of $780. […]
“Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S,” Millunovich wrote.
Apple PR today:
Apple today announced it has sold over two million of its new iPhone 5 in China, just three days after its launch on December 14. iPhone 5 will be available in more than 100 countries by the end of December, making it the fastest iPhone rollout ever.
Combined with the earlier first-weekend press release, that’s seven million confirmed iPhone 5s sold. Obviously, it’s more than that, but the idea that the iPhone has peaked in sales is absurd.
Horace Dediu will likely have a much more detailed (and accurate) analysis of this data on Asymco soon, but if unit sales grow 56% year over year (the average iPhone sales growth rate of Q1 for the past three years) they’ll sell 57 million of them. Hell, it’s going to be sold in over 50 additional countries by the close of the quarter, so that’s entirely plausible.
So, to answer your question Mr. Epstein: no, the iPhone has not peaked.
The dudes in Deftones — never The Deftones — haven’t got Chi Cheng back from his harrowing four years of hospitalization and recovery, but they’ve released two records in that time with temporary replacement bassist Sergio Vega. Despite his contributions only to Yokan and 2010’s Diamond Eyes, he’s managed to help craft a record that combines the best parts of the previous studio record with the classic White Pony from 2000.
Yokan begins with the stomping two-and-a-half-minute “Swerve City” which, judging by the videos on YouTube, is quite the crowd pleaser. A Deftones record hasn’t hit this hard from the start since, yes, “Back to School” on Pony, but “Swerve City” is more immediate and visceral. It gives way to “Romantic Dreams”, “Leathers”, and “Poltergeist” — three of the most textured, sweeping songs in the Deftones songbook. They’re loud in all the right ways, but there’s a sensitivity to the distortion and Chino Moreno’s screams.
Track seven, “Tempest”, is the most recent single from the album. It’s as radio-friendly as the record ever gets, but don’t think that it’s weak sauce. The pre-chorus uses a tasteful amount of delay to create a distant “run run run run, ahead ahead ahead ahead” effect. It’s beautiful, preceding “turning in circles, been caught in a stasis,” as Moreno pleads in a Thrice-esque chorus.
In amongst all of the chaos on the record — the loud guitars, the screamed vocals, the hard-hitting drums, and the wicked bass work — there’s a sense of every song being absolutely exquisite, and completely essential.