EA Could Miss Sales Target

According to Bill Lennan , an analyst from W.R. Hambrecht, Electronic Arts could miss sales targets for this quarter because of increased competition from other companies. Electronic Arts officials have forecast sales of $1.48 billion (a revision from an earlier estimate of $1.43 billion) for the third quarter, but Lennan has predicted a result of only $1.39 billion. However, according to a Thomson Financial survey analysts on average expect revenue of $1.47 billion. Since Lennan has citied increased competition from Microsoft as one of the main reasons for the possible fall in sales, despite Microsoft recently charting as only fourteenth in a list of America’s top fifteen publishers (and, along with Sony, suffering a falling market share compared to EA’s 2.7% increase from last year), the accuracy of his suggestions must be put in doubt.