“With Apple having announced iPhone shipments far in excess of reported activations, the ongoing debate about exactly what happened to all those other “missing” units continued on Friday, with investment bank Piper Jaffray weighing in with its own explanation,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“According to the firm, Apple sold 3.7 million iPhones during the three-month period ending December, 2 million of which were confirmed by AT&T to have been activated on its US wireless network during that same time,” Marsal reports.”Taking a closer look at the remaining/missing 1.7 million units, analyst Gene Munster said in a research note that believes another 350,000 were sold throughout Europe during the same time period and another 838,00 were sold with the intent that they’d be unlocked.”
Marsal reports, “The end result: there are likely only several hundred thousand units unaccounted for — rather than nearly 1.5 million — because they comprise Apple’s normal level of channel inventory, estimated by Munster to be approximately 5 weeks in the case of iPhone.”
Full article here.
We now conclude coverage of one of this week’s non-stories that were ginned up in order to manipulate AAPL share prices. One thing about this week amazed us: our opinion of certain analysts and members of the media actually managed to decline to even lower levels, which we previously would have considered an impossibility. TGIF!