Can the wii hit 20m by 08

[Sri Lumpa]

18-19 millions is the most likely number. 20 millions is possible but less likely.

Remember that last year Nintendo was planning 4 millions in 6 weeks but due the the wrist strap problems only shipped about 3.2 millions. Reggie said that the supply this year would be unprecedented so 3.5-4 millions seem like the likely minimum (unless they mean last year they had 3,200,000 units and the unprecedented supply this year is 3,200,001 units) which would put it at 17.5-18 millions (taking 500,000 off as being in transit since 3.2M is shipped not sold) as a likely minimum with 18-19 millions being quite likely and 20 millions a remote possibility.

Another way to look at it is that Nintendo said they have been producing 1.8 millions Wii since summer, which I will take to mean since the beginning of August as in June they were talking about a delay in production increase.

If we use a latency of 6 weeks between production and sale (transport by ship to the country then by lorry to successive distribution centers) it would mean that the increase in production would be visible in mid-September... right when the weekly average went from the 250k-280k of the summer to 190k-210k of mid-September to mid-October (Japan had already done most of its slowdown so it cannot account for more than 10k of that and up till then Europe was at a steady 60-70k so the rest of the slowdown would be mostly stockpiling).

Now, 1.8M/(30.5/7) ~= 413k Wiis produced per week. Let's round it down to 410k and let's see how many they stockpiled between the beginning of august and mid-november (as the Wiis produced after that would go toward 2008's number due the the shipping latency).

I will round every sold number up to lower the stockpile estimate so as to get a likely lower bound on the stockpile.

15th Sep:
410k - 213k = 197k (consoles produced the first week of august should arrive in stores around that week).
22nd Sep:
410k - 212k = 198k
29nd Sep:
410k - 205k = 205k
6th Oct:
410k - 190k = 120k
13th Oct:
410k - 229k = 181k
20th Oct:
410k - 290k = 120k
27th Oct:
410k - 306k = 104k
3rd Nov:
410k - 280k = 130k
10th Nov:
410k - 264k = 146k
17th Nov:
410k - 419k = -9k ---> this indicates the end of the stockpiling, exactly 6 weeks before the end of the year which mean that the stockpile is now finding its way in stores, starting with the week of black Friday.

So the likely minimum total units stockpiled is about 1.39M . Given that I lowered the weekly production estimate by 3k I will round it up to 1.4M to make my life easier.

So counting 6 weeks at 410k plus 1.4 millions in stockpile makes:
6*410k + 1400k = 3.86M getting into stores until the end of the year.

If we add that to last week's total, which was 14.25M IIRC we get:

14.25+3.86 = 18.1 millions

Given that we don't know exactly when they started producing 1.8 millions a months and the possible inaccuracies in Ioi's numbers it might be of by 500k but it gives us a likely lower bound as a lot of the Wiis sold recently in Europe might have been on shelves for a while as it was not sold out for the last few months (i.e. if it was sold out like in America, virtually every Wii sold after mid-september would have been produced since the beginning of August but since it wasn't a number of the Wiis sold in Europe since then were produced before and thus increase the stockpile number by an unquantifiable amount).

To sum up, 18M+ is 90% a sure thing, 19M is likely if the production increase started earlier than August and there was a significant (about 500-600k) number of Wiis stockpiled in Europe when it wasn't sold out and 20 million is possible but quite a stretch, but maybe the Yoga in Wii Fit in Japan is gonna give the Wii that stretch? (if the same slow-market stockpiling I talked about for Europe was there in Japan and in a big enough quantity)