Fickle stock market slams Apple

Guess the stockbrokers and analysts forgot to read the Wired article, or for that matter, the smart analysts at Forrester.  The stock plunged 6% today, on "disappointing" announcement of new iPhones.

I posted earlier re the Wired "4 POINTS", covered by Kyle Vanhemert;  PERSONALIZE, HARMONIZE (SW and HW), A TRUE DIGITAL SELF, and BODY and CONTEXT AWARE

I didn't discuss the 64-bit architecture, which Tony Cripps, senior device analyst at Ovum, described as:
"Meaningful innovation..., genuinely claim to have brought something new to the smartphone party.  ...should cement its lead as a mobile gaming platform (over Android)... in a space whose significance is sometimes downplayed beyond the gaming world."

And I didn't add the superlatives that Forrester analyst Frank Gillett did about the fingerprinting security: "Jaw droopingly easy" and "the first painless Biometric I've seen"

Longtime commentator Tim Bajarin was equally ecstatic.

Not so Dan Nakaso at the San Jose Mercury-News.  He managed to run a 5-column story with Troy Wolverton that led with "facts" -- pricing, availability, confirmation of rumor, etc, plus Bajarin's positive comments before launching into the "unclear how the pubic will react" paragraphs.  These featured Bob O'Donnell at IDC, saying "no surprises, ...disappointed" and Art Greengart at Current Analysis, saying "It's an iPhone 5 made out of plastic."

Then the paragraph that damns without much faint praise for which HP watchers have become all too accustomed: "APPLE's announcements came as the company arguably needs another hit product.  As a company, APPLE's sales growth has slowed to a crawl, and its profits slumped.  Meanwhile, the stock price, despite recovering recently (which ended today!) is still down more than 30% from the highs it set last year.    Except for the APPLE name, this could be a re-run of words from any recent HP story.

The story goes on to say that the iPhone has held up better than the slumping iPad and iMac lines (no mention of the nearly dead iPods), before *finally* turning to a couple of positive analysts.

It is little wonder than these top jobs pay so much, having to read such "What have you done for me lately" bilge.