That is completely incorrect. They are right in the middle of revenue predictions. Slightly on the lower end, sure, but that does not qualify as missing by a mile. If you say missing by a mile I would expect at least one standard deviation.
For Apple, that's a miss by a mile, sorry. And it's not like I'm the only one that thinks so -- check the stock price. It doesn't care much about downvotes either.
>>For Apple, that's a miss by a mile, sorry. And it's not like I'm the only one that thinks so -- check the stock price. It doesn't care much about downvotes either.
Pointing to the stock market as some sort of paragon of rationality is not a bright move. You may want to reconsider your stance.
I mean, I get the effect on stock prices and why it happens (people use the best available info and use past experiences with that info to calibrate their expectations) but that’s stock land. Here in the real world that’s not a miss by a mile, it’s just business as usual with no material effects on Apple’s outlook (i.e. this might be a miss by a mile if you trade stocks but that doesn’t mean there are any material consequences for Apple from this).
So people adjust their predictions, stock prices fluctuate, hopefully no one cares because Apple missing predictions by a couple million bucks is materially irrelevant for the company and couldn’t be any more materially irrelevant if it wanted to.
Analysts on average actually did better in predicting Apple’s revenue than Apple. (Apple obviously seems to be very conservative in their predictions, though.)
The analysts' recta have historically been much more accurate than Apple's press releases, which have (as is not atypical in the tech industry) routinely and severely underestimated revenue.
Here is a spreadsheet of analyst predictions: http://fortune.com/2015/07/21/apple-earnings-expectations-q3...
They range from $48b to $53b.