If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, goes an old saying - and Apple Computer Inc. appears to have indulged in some wishful thinking, rather than hard research, before issuing its claim this week that its new Apple On-line Store is the third largest e-commerce site on the Web.
Apple this week issued a press release with this headline: "Apple On-Line Store Orders Top 12 Million Dollars in First Month; Apple Store Becomes Third Largest E-Commerce Site in Under 30 Days."
The press release also quotes Steve Jobs, Apple's interim CEO, as saying: "The Apple Store is now one of the top e-commerce sites on the Internet. We are thrilled by the customer acceptance of both the store and our new build-to-order program."
Aside from the fact that $12 million in sales, compared to quarterly revenues of between $1.6 billion and $2.3 billion over the past four quarters, appear to be a drop in the bucket, Apple's claim of the number three e-commerce site is not based on facts, figures or competitive analysis. Instead it's nothing but a guess, a company representative admitted.
Asked how the company came up with the ranking, a company spokeswoman said that the company searched through press releases of other PC vendors to see what e-commerce position they claim.
Since research companies contacted by Apple could not provide numbers Apple decided to believe Dell Computer Corp.'s and Cisco Systems Inc.'s claims that the companies are running the number one and two e-commerce sites on the Web respectively, and took the number three position for itself.
"It's hard to get hard facts on this," said Apple spokeswoman Rhona Hamilton.
