The Reality Distortion Field of iPad Unit Sales Forecasts from Financial Analysts

Long-time Apple watcher Philip Elmer-DeWitt has collected some financial house estimates for iPad unit sales for 2010 and 2011. Do note that they use different time periods, e.g, calendar year, fiscal year, 12-months from first sale. Be advised that with all financial house projections one has to track their AAPL buy-sell ratings since "buy" usually mean "sell into buying momentum" and "sell" means "buy as share price declines on reaction to the "sell" rating. Unfortunately, financial house buy-sell recommendations (and their track record for them) are not provided in the article.

The cited article does list AAPL share price targets raised by some of the identified analysts. Price targets are "forecasts" that indicate where AAPL will be trading in 12 months but really they are nothing more than pegs traders use to time trading and talking heads use to proclaim on CNBC, etc., that a stock is "over-bought" or "over-sold." Free charting site here. Do remember that it only takes a 100 share block trade to hit a price point; watch price-by-volume over time. [JH]