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If you read tech news today, expect to see a story making the rounds
concerning a "consumer poll" rating the iPad versus the Galaxy Tab.
According to the report, an "overwhelming majority" of consumers
prefer Apple's tablet over its nearest Android competitor -- a
whopping 85 percent of those queried felt the iPad had a higher
perceived value than the Tab. Sounds shocking, right? Except there's
one small problem. The "survey" (and really, you have to use the term
loosely here) consisted of 65 people. Let's just say that again: 65
respondents. That's problem number one.
Problem number two is that the survey was conducted by Piper Jaffray
analyst Gene Munster, who is not only using a bizarre and somewhat
useless metric like "perceived value" to judge these devices, but is
also known for wildly miscalculating sales numbers and expectations
for Apple products. In fact, Gene Munster should probably be close to
the top of the most wanted list for irresponsible analysts. Some of
his famous misses? Take the wildly speculative report that Apple would
sell 5.6m iPads in 2010 (a baseless prediction which he quickly
reassessed to more reasonable digits... the day after the device's
launch), or the prediction that Apple would build its own search
engine (so far so good!), and of course, Gene's news that Apple will
have an HDTV on the market by 2011. Did we mention the $1,000 AAPL
stock price call? No? Okay.
So this latest report, in which Gene apparently just polled the
families living on his block, seems beyond disingenuous. The margin of
error on a group of 65 people is so high that it makes the results of
the iPad vs. Galaxy Tab study all but meaningless, and further
demonstrates the insidious, dangerous power of some analysts and their
fantasy football stock manipulations. The moral of the story? Next
time you see the names Gene and Munster in the same sentence, don't
just take the news with a grain of salt -- use the whole shaker.
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