“Earlier this week, BITG Research analyst Walter Piecyk lowered his rating of Apple shares from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral,’ an interesting move given that most other analysts have been scrambling to raise their price target for Apple shares,” Yoni Heisler writes for Network World. “What’s troubling about Piecyk’s piece, though, isn’t his conclusion per se, but rather that it rests on completely flawed information.”
“You see, Piecyk downgraded Apple stock because he claims that carriers are getting fed up with paying high subsidies to Apple and that subsequent changes to upgrade policies may yield a slower number of iPhone shipments in the next quarter,” Heisler explains. “Piecyk specifically points to AT&T as a carrier exploring stricter upgrade policies as a means to offset subsidy costs.”
Heisler explains, “There’s just one problem – as far as I can tell, there’s no record of any carrier offering consistent upgrade exceptions. In fact, the only example I could find was AT&T offering iPhone 3GS subsidized pricing on the iPhone 4 ahead of the Verizon iPhone 4 launch. The iPhone 4S is the most popular iPhone to date and no US based carrier offered iPhone 4 users still under contract the ability to upgrade to the iPhone 4S at subsidized pricing. In short, what in the world is Piecyk talking about?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Analyst has his ‘facts’ all wrong. What else is new?