Apple shows that good marketing can trump the Osborne Effect

Apple just reported earning $0.47 a share on $4.36 billion in revenue. That exactly matches Blackfriars earnings per share prediction, but is $160 million more on the revenue side than we forecast. Other differences from our forecast were than Apple sold about 1 million fewer iPods than we predicted, but the Mac business grew about 4% year over year. That's fairly amazing given that Apple's Intel-based MacBook Pro didn't even start shipping until half-way through the quarter. The earnings call attributed the better than expected performance to great iTunes Music Store sales, software, and retail store sales. We'll note that two out of three of those efforts were widely predicted to fail during the last five years.

I'd say Apple has proved that good marketing is more important to business performance than the Osborne Effect pundits thought would hamstring it a year ago.

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