iTunes Sales Not 'Collapsing' After All

john82 writes "Earlier this month we had a report from Forrester, based on a random sampling of 2,000 credit card accounts, that purported to show that iTunes sales were crashing. Now comes another survey from Reston, VA-based ComScore which indicates the exact opposite. ComScore's report which is based on actual iTunes sales shows a 84% increase during the first nine months of this year compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile the author of the Forrester report, Josh Bernoff, noted in his blog yesterday that they shouldn't be pummeled just because everyone took what he wrote and ran with it."

The only part that matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

...based on a random sampling of 2,000 credit card accounts...

I ask again: from whom did they get this data?

Is buying, selling, or redistributing such data a crime in the US, or CA in particular?

If not, why not? I'd like to make it crime with a nasty punishment.

If so, has the investigation started yet?

Grrrr.

Credit Card data

[failedlogic]

A few readers commented when the story was posted yesterday that they were wondering "How" the credit card data was obtained. It seemed from yesterday's story and the posts that Forrester Research had obtained credit card detailed transaction lists (w/o the credit card numbers, etc, I hope!).

So, I would like to ask, how was the data obtained and is this level of detailed information avilable for legal purchase? I'm just curious as to how much information is available about credit card puchases.

Testimony of Mr. Marc E. Kasowitz...

[mpaque]

From the testimony of Mr. Marc E. Kasowitz before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

One particularly effective illegal strategy involves the
following scenario: the short-selling hedge fund selects a
target company; the hedge fund then colludes with a so-called
independent stock analyst firm to prepare a false and negative
"research report" on the target; the analyst firm agrees not to
release the report to the public until the hedge fund
accumulates a significant short position in the target's stock;
once the hedge fund has accumulated that large short position,
the report is disseminated widely, causing the intended decline
in the price of the target company's stock. The report that is
disseminated contains no disclosure that the analyst was paid to
prepare the report, or that the hedge fund dictated its
contents, or that the hedge fund had a substantial short
position in the target's stock. Once the false and negative
research report -- misrepresented as "independent" -- has had
its intended effect, the hedge fund then closes its position and
makes an enormous profit, at the expense of the proper
functioning of the markets, harming innocent investors who were
unaware that the game was rigged, and damaging the target
company itself and its employees.

http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1972& wit_id=5486 [senate.gov]

Student exercise: Compare and contrast with the movement of AAPL stock shares before and after this report came out.

Can the editors while your at it.

[SgtChaireBourne]

Seems to me like a pretty clear admission that the sample size is too small to be reliable. He took the data he had available, analyzed it, and presented the results while noting the deficiencies in the method. Doesn't sound much like fraud to me. That's just grade school reading by the way...

So in other words, he knew from the beginning that he was spewing out bullshit. The article never should have gotten past the editors. One can argue back and forth whether the journalist should be disciplined, I'd argue for it and for an investigation of possible conflict of interest, but there's no way the editors should have let the article through as it stood. They should have been canned.

Re:Own up to your reporting

[drsquare]

So if you look at a thousand credit card transactions in 2005, and there are two itunes songs bought, then if you look at a thousand credit card transactions in 2006, and only one itunes song is bought, then you are 95% sure that itunes sales have halved?

And you're a professor for which university?