Who Was First to Call the Recent iPad Update?

There turned out to be a myriad of successful and failed predictions about Apple’s recently revealed iPad update including many unfounded rumors about the product’s actual name. What we’d like to add to the mix of retrospective coverage is a look at the source and analyst that were earliest to correctly pin a date on the iPad product announcement.

By rewinding publication time in Recorded Future to analyze only content published earlier than November of 2011, we can actually identify the earliest predictions for the iPad announcement to happen by March 2012.

What we find is a write up from Barron’s Tech Trader Daily published way back on September 13, 2011 that cited Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes suggesting that Apple would announce the iPad 3 by March. He missed on the name, but nailed the timing of the announcement

This type of finding is similar to what we’ve reported in the past on individuals and sources accurately predicting the name of Apple products, and in particular, blogger John Gruber’s call of the iPhone 3GS. This time around, Gruber’s predictions for the next-gen iPad release were made earlier than Reitzes’ call, but his timing was all over the map ranging from September 2011 to early 2012.

Since Reitzes proved to be fairly accurate in this instance, let’s see if he’s made any other predictions about Apple for the next two years.

What we find are calls on iPhone sales for 2012, the integration of ARM technology into some Macs by the second half of the year, and expectation that China Mobile will be in the running to sell the iPhone 5 come 2013. We’ll be adding Mr. Reitzes to those analysts that we follow closely for statements about the future of Apple, and you can do the same by setting up an alert on his predictions.

A last thought on the recent iPad announcement: what about all those predicting that the device would be called the iPad HD? Turns out that rumors of a device to be released with that name go way back to early 2010 before the original iPad was even on the market.

It’s always interesting to evaluate predictions on Apple because of the huge amount of speculative buzz that their products raise, but we also know that there are key analysts and bloggers out there for pretty much every area of interest. If identifying predictive voices or evaluating the credibility of sources would be valuable to your work, try out Recorded Future for free or send us a note and we’ll give you a tour.