“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!
Last chance to buy below $130! Or whatever the current stock price is…
It might be possible that stock price has almost nothing to do with how Apple is fairing right now.
Just because a company’s stock isn’t worth much in dollars, doesn’t automatically mean the company is in a slump. All it means is the value of the _Stock_ is down as a _common_ investment choice.
If I remember right, Apple was around $30-$50 when they released OS X. We all know the stock he hold dear to our hearts will soar when panic over nothing ceases. I hope some more people get out for now to get the stock price down, for now.
Maybe I’m just stupid or not reading the right websites. Buuuut…The comments I read that came from AT&T;’s earnings report where that AT&T;has 2 million “New iPhone Subscribers” not 2 million iPhone activations.
I read this to mean that 2 million new people joined AT&T;in order to use an iPhone but I don’t think that number is counting a whole lot of folks like me that already had an account with AT&T;and just added the iPhone to the plain we already had.
Just read Daniel Eran Dilger’s column.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/01/25/tom-krazit-of-cnet-and-eric-savitz-of-barrons-deny-the-jesus-phone/
There are no ‘missing’ Apple iPhones
There are no American tanks in Bagdad either.
“It might be possible that stock price has almost nothing to do with how Apple is fairing right now.”
who knows, maybe a 75 billion dollar dump by a rogue investor in europe that started a chain reaction and drove all the worlds markets down had something to do with it?
nah!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
It might be possible that stock price has almost nothing to do with how Apple is fairing right now.
If stock prices truly reflected a company’s health, MSFT would have less than half the market cap of AAPL, instead of the other way around.
Hmmm… purchased before Dec 2nd, but not activitated. Perhaps they were sitting under XMAS trees until Dec. 25th.
Apple certainly isn’t perfect, but they DO try harder than most of their competitors, which makes everybody else look like the lazy, greedy slobs they really are and they resent being exposed, which inevitably makes them hostile toward the companies whose excellent, well-thoought-out products makes the rest look so bad.
How about a MacDailyNews analyst index which rates the overall quality of their predictions and presents it in a simple, ongoing sidebar graphic?
Index? We don’t need no stinking index!
1.5 million or 700 000–thats a lot of phones–think of it as a percentage of the amount purported to have been sold and it doesnt look good–nevertheless I am amazed at these apple sell offs because it doesnt happen to any other stock–I mean between apple or lululemon or gamestop or solar–Id bet on apple–think of all the apple products–the ipods–the software–the macs the iphone ….I am disappointed with the new “air”–i would have liked to see something smaller and something a little faster–the thinness of it does not impress me at all. But its a nice thing. My worry is that Apple will never come back. If Apple misses the next quarter its all over.
Haha MDN is pathetic deleting my posts! Just goes to show that the site is run by a bunch of amatuers – you can dish it out but you cant take it can you MDN?
<bNeoReven
If I may ask, why would it matter if /any/ iPhones are ‘missing’ ?</b>
As Daniel proposes, the article more ridiculous “Apple is the New Microsoft” horse twaddle. In this respect, the lazy pundit accuses Apple of stuffing the channel with iPhones and then claiming they were sold, like MS claimed that “shipped” equaled “sold” and pretended that all the Xboxs sitting on shelves gathering dust were in the hands of consumers.
“f I may ask, why would it matter if /any/ iPhones are ‘missing’ ?
Apple got paid.”
What if Apple just made up how many they shipped, or stuffed a million units into the channel to try to keep up the pretense that the unit is selling well?
Its the oldest trick in the book for a struggling company.
As the stock option thing shows, Steve’s not above a little fraud when it benefits him.
On another forum someone pointed out that Apple said they had sold 3.7M iPhones since the release to end of the last quarter. That includes the few weeks in the previous quarter where they sold over a million.
ATT said they activated 2M the last quarter. This doesn’t include the activations in the first quarter the iPhone was sold.
So the missing iPhones could be no more than 0.5M, given that 0.3M were sold in Europe.
What about the grey market? Over here in my country (Netherlands) you can’t get an “official” iPhone and won’t for months to come, but I have one, several friends an colleagues and when I go out I often see someone with it in a bar or café. We are in between Germany and France and UK where they do sell them. I got mine with 2 year subscription of 30 euro a month for only 190 euros. Unlocked 1.0, upgraded and re-unlocked it myself to 1.1.1. My friends’ is 1.1.2 with hardware unlock. I guess there account for the “missing” Phones, don’t think Apple is playinng the inventory trick.
Shocked Reader = putz