[PatNY]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

You are assuming that the figure is correct, therefore it must have come from someone who knew about it.
We don't know that it is correct.
It could be just made up.
It could be someone misunderstanding what they have overheard.
It could be that they were originally going to order a large amount in January and less in February and March (as you suggested in your post), and then decided to level it out across all three, but only the January decrease is being reported, not the February and March increases.
It could be that if Apple place concrete orders for X, they have the right to reserve Y more units of production at no up front cost, and what is being reported as 'ordered' is X+Y, not X.
We just don't know. That has been my point the whole time.
There are no facts here, only assertions.

Yes, I assume the numbers are correct or fairly close to the actual numbers (ie, the actual original orders could really be for 17.8 million or 21.4 million, for example, and not 19 million ... but that's close enough).

And, yes, we don't really know if it is correct. But isn't that the case for a great number of things we hear and read about?

I take everything at face value if it's widely reported by multiple established and reliable media outlets and unless there is something inherently fishy about the story or someone reputable has challenged that information. I don't simply discount things because I don't like the implications of what the story might mean -- which seems to be the case with you and this story.

If you were to come across reports in the WSJ and the NYTs exactly similar to these, but they instead say Apple doubled original orders of LCD screens, and the information is coming from multiple supply chain sources, are you really going to question the validity of the reports the way you are doing here? Are you going to dissect every phrase by the reporter and look for areas to nitpick? Somehow I don't think you would.

You can't have it both ways. You can't pick and choose the information to believe according to how it fits your point of view.

As for something being made up or a lie, well unless you point to a logical explanation why that would be so, then in the absence of any sound reasoning, I would say that's unlikely. And if it were a pure lie -- and far off the mark -- then Apple likely would have corrected the misinformation by now.

Which is not the same as a fact.
That is the point. It is not a fact that they have cut orders, it is an assertion that they have cut orders.

Correct, but, again, I am going to assume as fact any factual assertion that is widely reported in multiple established and reliable news outlets, and which goes essentially unchallenged. For example, if every media outlet is asserting that Samsung has plans already on the drawing board for a Note III, then I am going to take that as fact, even though Samsung has not made any such announcements

You said: "But the very fact that they cut the number previously ordered" ... It isn't a fact. It is an assertion, as you have just said.

Ok, let me correct myself then:

"But the information that they cut the number previously ordered seems to indicate that demand may be lower than they expected."

Better?

So two.
That isn't quite: "independently verified and repeated by almost all major news outlets. " is it?
And the two stories have different numbers, one of which (65 million), you don't believe either.

Yes, two. And two is more than you get with many stories.

And I never meant that almost all major outlets independently verified the story. That almost never happens with most news stories. It's an somewhat illogical interpretation. But I can understand the source of your confusion.

This is my original statement:

"No more blind faith than anyone else who takes at face value a story that has been independently verified and repeated by almost all major news outlets."

To be clearer, I should have placed the modifier differently:

"No more blind faith than anyone else who takes at face value a story that has been repeated by almost all major news outlets and independently verified."

As for the 65 million number, no, it's not that I don't believe it. I believe in that case the number, which appears in only one report, was used in a vague manner by the writer, so it remains unclear what he was talking about. It can be interpreted various ways. If he intended it to mean ALL screen orders in a quarter, then that number is very believable.

This is getting much more nitpicky that it would ever be in real life, and I doubt either of us care about it as much as it must seem to anyone following these posts, we would probably both have gotten bored and gone off to get something to eat by now

You're the one doing the nitpicking. But that's ok, I rather enjoy the discussion.

I'm fundamentally mistrustful and cynical of anonymous sources and analyst reports, so I prefer to just ignore them until some real news is available.

Unless it's a report favorable to Apple, right? Then I suppose you would take it at face value, run it up a flagpole and salute it!

If you say no, then I gather when I read this forum in the future I will never come across a post of yours citing a report that is based on anonymous sources, correct?

As I said above, I will take at face value any report which meets the specified criteria. Whether I like the implications or not.


--Pat