Being a tech industry analyst has got to be a hell of a job. If you make it to the point where people look forward to hearing what you have to say (the point of punditry, maybe?) you really don’t have to make any huge, Earthshaking predictions. You just use what you know about market trends, developing technologies, and company/leadership personalities, and you won’t sound like a fool…even if you’re not exactly right.
But some analysts aren’t that conservative.
There are also the big game hunters, who go for the big predictions and the big payoff. Unfortunately, the more big predictions you miss, the more you need to make to get your reputation back up.
Last week, Trip Chowdry of Global Equities Research predicted that Motorola will release at least 10 new Android phones in 2010, priced between $39 and $399.
I saw this prediction, and I instantly got the “do you believe this guy?” look on my face, with palms upflipped and a half smile against a scowling brow…the Andrew Dice Clay look.
No disrespect meant, but Chowdry doesn’t exactly have the best record for big predictions. In May, he predicted that the Palm Foleo would make a comeback. In January, He predicted that Costco would sell $149 iPhones. In 2007, he even predicted that Google would “lose its technological edge” to a semantic search startup called Powerset (which was bought by Microsoft in 2008.)
Track record aside, a lineup with “at least” 10 Android phones is an insane prediction, and here’s my reason, using some simple reasoning instead of what appears to be bombastic inference.
Premise A.) Motorola averages between 26-30 handsets a year.
Premise B.) Android is a smartphone OS.
Premise C.) Motorola’s best-selling handsets are not smartphones.
Conclusion– Motorola is not going to have a lineup made up of more than 30% smartphones, especially when 72% of all phones sold are feature phones.
Yes, Motorola has said it will be shifting its focus from feature phones onto smartphones, and it has said it will put Android at the heart of that, but a launch of more than ten devices on Android in one year would not only be an unprecedented shift, but totally bonkers. I’m not saying I don’t think it will happen eventually, but Motorola has gone through literally dozens of different OSes in its history, and this is another instance of past behavior shaping our preception of future behavior.
Trackbacks /
Pingbacks