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apple’s opening stock price and iPad exuberance

January 28th, 2010 • posts i've written

no, that’s not a giant iPhone or a miniature Steve Jobs

On Monday I challenged my readers and my co-workers to take a guess at the opening stock price for AAPL today, January 28th. I closed the poll before the earnings report was released and before too many rumors of the new tablet were confirmed or denied.

Today’s Opening Stock Price: $205.32

How the groups did:

24 of my readers were up to the challenge:
Average Guess: 255.90
Median Guess: 223.61

10 of my co-workers were up to the challenge:
Average Guess: 207.779
Median Guess: 212.085

Median guess of both groups: 217.385

So who was closest to the correct opening price?

That would be Mr. Clay Parker Jones of Undercurrent with a guess of $201.83.

In all, from my completely non-scientific study, there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of irrational exuberance for the new Apple tablet – which is now officially dubbed the iPad. The name inspired ‘iTampon’ to be a trending topic yesterday, too. I frankly love the internet’s sense of humor.

I suppose that’s the downside of Apple’s intense secrecy. It leads us to make guesses. And the more time we have to guess, the more insane the idea of the present under the Christmas tree becomes. Normally, Apple beats our expectations, but not this time. Maybe never again. All of the adjectives we actually applied to the iPhone when it launched, magical, amazing, revolutionary, were applied to the iPad, by Steve Jobs himself, and it just didn’t stick. We wanted jet packs and instead we got a very reasonable, well built, automobile. We’d seen it before.

You might be able to tell people what cool looks like, but you can’t tell us what breathtaking feels like.

Of course, this is all punditry until the thing goes on sale and we see if there is a market for this third device. I’m not convinced yet, but then again, I’m a poor Nostradamus. Skimming over the news today, it seems the general tone went from extreme jubilation pre-announcement, to naysaying post announcement, to “everything is amazing and no one is happy” post post announcement. It’s like watching the blogosphere trudge through the 5 stages of loss.

Here are a few links to my favorite posts about the iPad thus far:

What’s Missing from the Apple iPad?

Walt Mossberg’s First Impressions of the New Apple iPad

The Awl had my favorite live blogging session, still worth a read

Do you plan to buy the iPad? Tell me why.

Related posts:

Tags: Apple, iPad

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5 Responses (add your comment)

Tom January 28, 2010
at 12:01 pm

I like to ponder how aware of all this Apple have been. On the one hand they clearly have a fundamental understanding of what people expect from them, and what they want. Judging by past performance they have always accurately found a product which appeals, often when nothing similar exists yet. They also use secrecy to great effect to build hype.

But beyond that you have to ask how much of a gamble this really is- and indeed any product launch is. Apple are safer bets than most but the dynamic of the internet is such that it is always a risk as to how the crowd will react. It can be so random. I suppose the Itampon trend is the perfect example of that unpredictability.

I say this but with more words here too: http://www.tomcallard.com/?p=244
Noah Brier January 28, 2010
at 1:02 pm

The average guess was $255? That’s insane. As long as he was announcing a tablet it’s safe to assume that the news was mostly already priced into the stock.

Curious to see where they close today as analyst officially react.
Eric Tabone January 28, 2010
at 2:10 pm

@noah

http://bit.ly/agv0Hb

If the price was already built into the stock, than its generally unchanged average over the last few months – the period through which the (mostly true) iPad rumors were spreading – might also indicate the products lukewarm reception over the last 24 hours.
Bud Caddell January 28, 2010
at 5:34 pm

@noah

That’s precisely why I tried this little guessing experiment. I was a bit shocked by the over-indulged optimism and expectations for the tablet.

Looks like AAPL just closed sub 200. Ouch.
Zen Dernhelm January 30, 2010
at 3:48 am

Steve Jobs has being quoted as saying, “This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

I tend to agree with this. Here’s why: the iPad is another giant step by Apple toward turning the computer into a non-threatening appliance that absolutely anyone can use.

Finally a computer that will run as reliably as your TV, or your CD player, or your microwave.

Apple has completely abstracted the filing system from the user, just like they did with the iPhone, and they’ve added a full-size core set of mainstream computer tools – browser, email, calendar. word processing, spreadsheet/charting/database and presentations.

Disregard all complaints from the sophisticated crowd. They are irrelevant. Apple is not aiming this device at them.

Apple kept it small – they kept it simple – and they kept it inexpensive. They will expand the capabilities carefully over the next few years to include printing and a few other things – but already, right now, this is the computer as appliance that 100 million people who don’t want to understand computers can pick up and use without any training at all.

I am certain that Apple has their 5-year road map already laid out for the iPad, and its’ successors.

Mark my words, this is going to be HUGE. And amazingly enough, they didn’t even mention it at all.

Remember his update comment about having sold 250 million iPods? Well get ready, because it’s about to happen again, with the iPad – bet on it.