“Apple CEO Steve Jobs will need to work some magic to hit his sales target of 10 million iPhones this year,” Priya Ganapati reports for TheStreet.com. “Since the iPhone’s launch in June, Apple has sold about 4 million devices, including 2.3 million during the important holiday season.”
“To reach the 10 million mark, it needs to average 2.5 million phones in sales a quarter over the next four quarters — or 200,000 more than what it sold during the big holiday season,” Ganapati reports.
“Some analysts say Apple will have to cut deals with more phone carriers outside the U.S., upgrade the iPhone and most importantly, drop the price in order to reach its ambitious sales target,” Ganapati reports.
MacDailyNews Take: So, the genius analysts predict that Apple will have to do exactly as Apple has planned and operate exactly as Apple has historically with iPod. Thanks for the incisive analysis, guys and gals.
Ganapati continues, “A price cut is a possibility, agrees Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital. But what’s more likely to happen, he says, is that Apple will upgrade the software in the existing iPhone and offer new models, including the much-awaited 3G version of the phone.”
“Despite investor fears, Apple’s iPhone sales have been solid, says Abramsky. iPhone sales in the quarter ended Dec. 30 were up 107% from the previous quarter, while the smart-phone industry is estimated to have grown at 13% to 15%,” Ganapati reports. “‘The 4 million phones sold in the first six months is also double the initial run rate of the Motorola Razr,’ says Abramsky. ‘From our perspective, the early performance of the iPhone is nothing short of remarkable relative to other historic phone launches.'”
Full article, which is inexplicably headlined “Apple’s iPhone Elixir: Cut Prices,” along with a bunch of nonsense about supposed investor “concerns” over normal iPhone inventory levels (see: the ginned-up “missing iPhones” malarky) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
