Analyst Opinion: Apple is not real

You had to have your web browser on speed dial to keep up with Apple news in the past week: Contradicting and quite controversial reports made headlines, surprising with crashing iTunes sales and alleging that Apple owners are 55 years old, on average. Apple saw little need to refute any of the claims and there is a simple reason: Apple does not care - and doesn't have to.

A few days ago, a series of events got me thinking about how well Apple controls what we see of them and how little of what we see is actually real. Kind of like a scene in the Wizard of Oz: Like the guy behind the curtain, the real Apple is never visible.

The first major event was a Forrester Research study another study surfaced almost immediately, which took the opposite view, resulting in an emotional discussion which study is closer to reality. The Forrester team responsible for the iTunes report specializes in consumer products; the counter study was from Comscore, which specializes in studies that typically take a long time to set up and aim to support companies in sales efforts. In other words, Comscore isn't really a numbers house like this specific division of Forrester. It's a different kind of research company and one that is typically closely tied to vendor-sponsored studies.

But there is more: Earlier, another numbers oriented firm, Meta Facts, released a study that claimed that the average Apple user is 55 years old, which somewhat makes Apple your grandfather's computer company. A bunch of analysts popped up and disagreed, but no research was apparently on hand to prove the study wrong. Apple's own opinion is that the age report is wrong - and this view is based on who they see standing in stores. Again, there was no actual contradictory independent research on the average age of those that buy Apple computers available.

Could you imagine any other company, besides Google perhaps, that would answer to these dramatic headlines with a similar lack of enthusiasm?

With that in mind, what do those studies mean? Are they practically worthless, as Apple's reaction might suggest. Or is there something else? Technically, if we saw this behavior from Microsoft, we'd be jumping up and down screaming foul because both of the challenged studies, the first on iTunes declines and the second on their aging base, appear to be actually independent papers while the challenging information from Comscore either appear to be Apple funded or may be seriously lacking facts.

But, remember, we aren't talking about Microsoft. We are talking about Apple's "reality distortion field".

Studies in perspective

To be clear, if iTunes sales saw an earth-shattering sales drop, I doubt it would be material, as Apple sells iTunes stuff for a near break even price. But a sales drop would be consistent with other work that indicated on-line music sales weren't going particularly well and there could be an indication Apple's grip on its existing installed base might weaken. This could increase the potential of a market shift, but Apple still has a proprietary hardware interface that connects to peripherals and cars, which could turn out to be just as strong. In any case, for a decline in sales to make sense, we would need a strong competitor: Zune didn't make that cut, but Sandisk might be taking some advantage of this.

Unlike a lot of studies that measure installed bases, the second study didn't appear to be funded by anyone and while the study could be in error (which clearly isn't good) at least it wasn't intentionally misleading either.

If Apple customers are 55 years and older on average, that would be consistent with what has been happening in my industry for a long time: Giving our parents Apple machines because we don't want to support the darned things for the rest of our lives. One of my peers actually has this built into her stump speech: Apple computers, because they are so easy to use, are actually better for older folks.

In the end, other than being interesting, I'm not sure either statistic actually means that much but, Apple's response, which was beautifully executed, got me thinking about how well they control our view of them.