Last night, we wrote about a Forrester Research report on iTunes sales. Today, analyst Josh Bernoff weighs in via his own blog with the headline: “iTunes sales are NOT plummeting! Press credibility, on the other hand ...” Referring to articles by The Register and Bloomberg, Bernoff writes: “Now for the record, iTunes sales are not collapsing. Our credit card transaction data shows a real drop between the January post-holiday peak and the rest of the year, but with the number of transactions we counted it’s simply not possible to draw this conclusion . . . as we pointed out in the report. But that point was just too subtle to get into these articles.”
Bernoff says he started to get calls from hedge fund managers, an Apple spokesman, and lots of news orgs. He does his best to highlight the aspects he thought deserved attention and closed with a message for Apple: ”Apple is extremely stingy with information about their business and public comment. Their unwillingness to comment on the record or off about anything they’re working on or any industry results beyond the basic statistics fuels speculation, pro and con, from their supporters and detractors. In the research business we like facts—and every other technology company is more open with them. So maybe it’s time for Apple to share a bit more. When the real bad news hits—and it’s inevitable, no company gets everything right—that openness would pay off.