“Earnings doubled at Verizon Communications Inc. in the latest quarter due to pension accounting effects, but the bottom-line result masked a weak quarter in the local-phone division, which was hammered by a strike and a hurricane,” Peter Svensson reports for The Associated Press.
“In wireless, Verizon, the largest carrier, kept adding more high-paying subscribers than rival AT&T Inc.,” Svensson reports. “But like AT&T, it was hurt by the delayed launch of the new iPhone model, and missed analyst expectations for the number of new subscribers on contract-based plans. Pension adjustments were larger in last year’s quarter. Factoring those in, the latest earnings were about even with last year.”
Svensson reports, “Verizon Wireless added 882,000 subscribers on contract-based plans. That was a slowdown from iPhone-fueled results earlier in the year — Verizon started selling the coveted smartphone in February. Analysts had expected about 950,000 additions in the quarter. Analysts were in general caught flat-footed by the effect of the delayed iPhone launch, underestimating how much people were holding back. Apple Inc.’s overall iPhone sales failed to meet their expectations when it reported Tuesday, sending its stock down. Last week, the company launched the new iPhone 4S, and sales have set new records.”
Read more in the full article here.
Now we know the real reason for the October iPhone4S announcemt date.
Hopefully Apple will never let this happen again.
I, OTOH, hope that Apple would be doing this, while keeping the analysts flatfooted, every year. Naive as I am, I’d like to think of Apple as something more than AAPL.
I strongly suspect that future iPhone introductions will occur in FY Q1. This will be larger than, but part of the iPod traditional fall iPod announcements; since iPod sales are in decline.