Apple shares tumble after false internal email

May 17th, 2007

Never underestimate the power of the blogger. Engadget posted about an internal email at Apple stating that the iPhone and Leopard launches were to be delayed to October and next January respectively. Later Apple stated that the original email was a fake and the product launches are still on track.

Despite there only being twenty minutes between engadget’s post and the response, Apple’s share price fell by 2.2 percent. Needless to say Apple investor’s would have been none too pleased at the power of the blog.

However there’s an interesting follow up article at the Inquirer regarding a post at Information Week. The post suggests that engadget behaved irresponsibly and it was naive journalism to post about the email without checking with Apple first.

Lessons learned in Journalism 101, however, would have prevented the debacle.

The post at IW seems to be confusing journalism with blogging - sure there are many similarities but a blog tends to be an opinion rather than a ‘news items’. They try to blame engadget for the share price dip yet surely that was more due to the nervousness of the shareholders than anything else. Also this is not the first time a company’s share price has moved due to rumour or speculation - in fact the markets thrive on such movements.

No, as far as I’m concerned engadget did the right thing reporting information as they discovered it.

As an aside the Apple share price currently stands at $109.44 - over a dollar up from where it stood PRIOR to the fake email post. If I was a Apple investor (of the less nervous variety) I would be cracking open a cold one right now and saying ‘Go, go, engadget’.