14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few days there have been quite a few confusing, if not downright misleading, stories about the iPhone. From AT&T making hasty announcements to the reports about the negotiations in China, and now the reports about the 'delaying' of the iPhone, one has to wonder why the sudden flood, and just who stands to gain from it.
As we have already seen from previous false reports, Apple's stock can take quite a beating based on nothing but pure rumor. At the same time, due to the secretive nature of the company, such rumors are often the only way to get any idea about what the company is doing in the months between announcements and product launches. Unfortunately, this vicious circle can be abused, and maliciously crafted rumors will not only hurt the company, but also the shareholders, at the same time creating buying opportunities that can be taken advantage of to make quite a killing.
Now we are seeing a rerun of the iPhone postponed report, as various articles report that the next generation of the iPhone has been delayed from a March/April release to the second half of the year. All of this sounds very newsworthy, and it will definitely get a lot of attention, but the fact of the matter is that Apple has not actually announced when it will be shipping the next generation of iPhones, and as such they cannot be delayed.
All reports point back to Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co., who said in a report that "Our recent checks suggest that, due to a pushout in the introduction of such 'killer applications' as the second-generation iPhone from the March/April time frame to mid to late summer, demand for NAND flash memory in 1H08 could weaken more than expected."
Where Hosseini's information comes from is never mentioned, but the quote has been used in each and every story. At the same time, Apple's stock is down nearly $7 today, and still going down.