ChangeWave Survey Foretold Apple's Earnings Call

Steve Jobs must be keeping a close eye on our ChangeWave survey findings. In a highly unusual move, he participated in Apple (AAPL) earnings phone call last week to ensure investors that despite the economic slowdown there's no reason to worry. And he did so even though Apple's outlook going forward came in well below the Street's expectations -- exactly as our September ChangeWave survey had predicted.

In the conference call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer estimated Apple's sales would come in between $9-10 billion for the December quarter - well under the $10.7 billion that had been anticipated. He also said earnings per share would fall between $1.06 and $1.35 - also far less than the Street's $1.67 consensus estimate.

In our September PC spending survey of 4,262 consumers, we found Apple's real problem wasn't Mac sales over the previous 90 days - sales looked good. The problem was the outlook for Macs going forward.

by Paul Carton |  10/30/08  |  Stocks: AAPL,