Does anyone care what Ed Zabitsky says about Apple?

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt February 18, 2012: 12:11 PM ET

An analyst with a $270 target andÂ "sell short" rating may have a credibility problem

Zabitsky on CNBC

I applaud my CNNMoney colleague Hibah Yousuf for trying to pin down which hedge funds have been dumping their Apple (AAPL) shares lately, but I'm not sure I would have usedÂ ACI Research's Edward Zabitsky as a source for a piece entitled Not everyone loves Apple's stock.

To call Zabitsky's most recent note -- published Jan. 25 -- an outlier is an understatement. He set a $270 price target on a day when the stock was trading over $450 and advised investors to "sell short" just before a run that would take Apple to over $526.

The following Monday CNBC did something it rarely does. It invited Zabitsky to appear on its Halftime Report and grilled him mercilessly -- and quite skeptically -- for six long minutes. See here.

Long before then, however, Zabitsky was famous among Apple investors for his "sky is falling" Apple soundbites. AAPLInvestors Terry Gregory has been collecting them on his iPhone Death Watch for years:

"When the iPhone came out, it was so far beyond what was out there on the market, pretty much up until now, but with what's coming out from competitors, that advantage is going away. For the first time, Apple's going to be faced with a serious growth challenge."Â 22 April 2009 "The iPhone is a bandwidth hog and is not profitable for carriers. Rivals are entering the mobile browser space to compete with Apple. Although Apple's gadgets are trendy, their hardware will eventually become irrelevant."Â 29 December 2009 "Apple has raised the bar on what's normal, but other phones are easily narrowing the difference because web technology is easier to program."Â 7 May 2010 "If a price war breaks out in Android phones, Samsung wins hands down."Â 15 Feb 2012

To which we can add, from Zabitsky's Jan. 25 note:

"Content is king again. It is available everywhere – not just from Apple. If we learn one thing from Netflix's fall from grace, it is that aggregating content is no longer a viable business model." "Speaking of open ecosystems, what will Apple do when carriers introduce network-based video calling?" "We maintain our Sell Short rating on Apple. The internet is the great equalizer. It saved Apple during the rise of the wired broadband internet. It will level the playing field for other vendors with the rise of the true mobile broadband internet."

We asked Zabitsky if he was serious about his $270 price target and his "sell short" rating, and he was kind enough to reply:

"To be clear," he wrote, "shorting is for professionals. Individuals should just be asking themselves if Apple is as invincible as they think.

"My targets are based upon my expectations for the business over a two year time frame. They are not based upon the current share price. In 2007, my targets were all well below the share prices, in late February 2009, my targets were all far above the share prices.

"The difference between me and my competitors is that I had a successful buy-side career. I have also had 20 years of experience talking to high tech people who are far smarter than I am.Â Futhermore, IÂ do not have a trading desk breathing down my neck."

Apple's $40 rise and fall: Was Goldman Sachs behind it?

Something jammed its blood funnel into Apple's share price last weekÂ

"Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression."

So wrote Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi in his 2010 takedown of Goldman Sachs -- the article that famously described the 143-year-old banking house as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Without ever actually accusing Goldman MORE

Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 18, 2012 7:18 AM ET

No, Netflix doesn't suddenly believe in DVDs again

Netflix is making the signup process a bit easier for customers who want to rent only DVDs. That doesn't mean the company has suddenly re-embraced the DVD business.

FORTUNE -- Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings really can't catch a break. And it's only partly his fault. Ever since that whole aborted DVD-spinoff fiasco (Qwikster), which followed that whole new-pricing-plan fiasco, every one of his utterances has been examined by the media MORE

Dan Mitchell, contributor - Feb 17, 2012 3:33 PM ET

Today in Tech: Google tracked iPhone and Mac users

Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours.Â Sign upÂ to get the round-up delivered to youÂ each and every day.

* The Wall Street JournalÂ reports that GoogleÂ (GOOG) and other ad companies were getting around millions of AppleÂ (AAPL) users' privacy settings, in particular those who used Apple's Safari Web browser on their iPhones and computers. (The Wall Street Journal)

* Foxconn, maker of Apple iPhones and iPads, raised its worker wages by MORE

JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Feb 17, 2012 2:26 PM ET

A virtual firing range to goose real sales

Even for the gimmick-crazed ad world, the campaign for a new Playstation video game is likely to raise eyebrows.

By Alex Konrad, reporter

FORTUNE -- This Valentine's Day, thousands of people used their keyboards and web browsers not to buy flowers or forget-me-nots, but to aim and fire a machine gun at an ice cream truck best-known as the wheels of a homicidal, virtual clown. I was supposed to be one of MORE

mvella1271 - Feb 17, 2012 12:48 PM ET

Apple gives the Gray Lady the cold shoulder

A lesson in access journalism in the wake of the New York Times' Foxconn series

"An Apple spokesman said no executives were available to comment."

That sentence, appearing 12 paragraphs into a 14-graph storyÂ by Brian X. Chen in Thursday's New York Times,Â speaks volumes about how Apple (AAPL) deals with press coverage it doesn't like.

For more than a week, the company had been seeding selected media outlets with early access to its next MORE

Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 17, 2012 7:18 AM ET

Apple public relations' new media pecking order

How the news of the Mac's next operating system -- Mountain Lion -- got disseminated

Source: Techmeme

The top tech news story Thursday, apparently, has nothing to do with working conditions in China, or who owns the iPad brand, or even the fact that Motorola (MMI) may have to remove "slide to unlock" from its smartphones.

No, the top 135 stories on Techmeme this afternoon are all about the next version of MORE

Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 16, 2012 3:50 PM ET

SEC: Wireless carriers must allow shareholder votes on data neutrality

AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon must allow shareholders -- like the Beastie Boys' Mike D -- to vote on whether the companies should continue to impose data caps on their customer.Â

FORTUNE -- The SEC on Wednesday ordered that Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), and Sprint Nextel (S) must allow shareholder votes on Net neutrality.

The companies have displayed transparent hypocrisy in arguing against the votes. Net neutrality, they said, MORE

Dan Mitchell, contributor - Feb 16, 2012 3:17 PM ET

Morgan Stanley: Apple could pay a 1.9% to 3.8% dividend from domestic free cash flow alone

Likely to exceed the tech sector's average 1.2% dividend, driving share price up $100

Click to enlarge.

The institutions that hold 70% of Apple's (AAPL) shares lobbied Steve Jobs for years to put some of his company's rapidly growing cash hoard in their hands.

Now that his successor is talking openlyÂ about the company's discussions to do just that, the sell-side analysts have started to calculate how big their share might be.

The latest MORE

Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 16, 2012 12:06 PM ET

Today in Tech: Mac OSX 'Mountain Lion'

Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours.Â Sign upÂ to get the round-up delivered to youÂ each and every day.

"We're starting to do some things differently."
-- Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller (Daring Fireball)

Â * Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled a new version of the Mac operating system, named "Mountain Lion," with features currently found in the company's mobile software. (The Wall Street Journal)

* Japanese authorities arrested MORE

JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Feb 16, 2012 11:49 AM ET

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