I will advise people to not get too bullish on the hardware sales of the DS - be wary of the stock getting too high (as I have noticed a 5.46% jump so far today).
Many new people think the price is overpriced ? are you talking about the Dec future, or the LTD future ? If it is the Dec one, I think most believe think 2.9 / month is impossible.
Why is this dropping? About 3DS are sold per houshold. this should sell two times at least that of the wii. Id expect sales ranging from 3-5million for this december future.
@JoshuaJSlone,Whoops, I was totally thinking about January. Sorry about the confusion. The words that I were thinking and the words that were typed did not match up. I knew about NPD's somewhat convoluted calendar year, but misspoke.
@lstormy10, False. December (and March, June, September) is always a 5 week month. NPD month lengths are pretty constant, except in cases where they have to make an adjustment to January to keep the calendar from drifting completely off since a 52-week year doesn't exactly match reality.
Word of caution : If you begin shortselling DS since last year it only achieve 1.6 Million, and this year you expect them to achieve only 2 Million (20% increase vs. last year) on Dec 07, you will LOSE a lot of money, guaranteed.
Illustration of DS this year vs last year : Nov 06 : 900K Nov 07 : 1,500K (66% increase vs. last year).
Today's pricing for the lifetime stock (about 10,600DKP or about 106 million units worldwide) is a buy because of the price dropping today.
As I have posted before, Nintendo's own estimates for lifetime sales of the DS by the end of March 2008 is about 81 million units with about 28 million sold in their 2007 financial year. Nintendo tends to usually underestimate the hardware sales of their units (as they have revised estimates higher for both the Wii and DS multiple times during both consoles lifetimes thus far). I would say that it is easily conceiveable that the DS will go on with sales into at least 2009 and probably into 2010 - even if another model is announced during that time (though I am not speculating on the possibility of this). The DS will easily be able to sell another 30 million units at least during this time leading to the lifetime stock being at least around 11,000DKP or 110 million units worldwide.
@feelmyring, A price drop does make sense when in your home territory, your competitor (the PSP) is starting to actual compete at a higher level with the DS. Also, Nintendo would still be making profits at a $99.99 price point while increasing sales enough to fill in the bit of profit that would be missing with not having the system at a $129.99 price point. If Nintendo is serious about appealing to an expanded audience of everyone, then making the price point so that it is a much easier decision psychologically for the consumer (there is a bit of difference from sub-$100 to over-$100) to purchase the system.
I believe a $10 to $15 price drop would be a worse move and less likely move than a $30 price drop due to the fact that sales would not receive much of a boost from a $10-15 price drop compared to a $30 price drop - meaning that the bit of lost profit would not be replaced as easily with a $30 price drop. Plus, look at the history of Nintendo with their handhelds - they like to bring their handheld systems down to a sub-$100 price point.
Also, the big profit maker of software sales for Nintendo would be superbly increased by a price drop on the hardware that would get more units out to a wider audience. All Nintendo has to do is make sure they have the supply and then institute a price drop - sales would rocket even higher than what we have seen in the past year.
A price drop to $99.99 in 2008 (obviously not the beginning of 2008, more likely in the summer to pre-holiday seasons) would make the perfect sense for Nintendo and their DS.
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