“Fewer mobile phone upgrades at AT&T in the June quarter may have contributed to Apple missing its iPhone “whisper number” when reporting fiscal Q3 earnings, which punished its stock, says BTIG Research,” Reinhardt Krause reports for Investor’s Business Daily. “AT&T (NYSE:T) has been a key marketing partner of Apple since 2007, when it became the first wireless firm to sell the iPhone. AT&T and the other national wireless firms — Verizon Communications, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint — have recently shifted to new promotions that make it easier for subscribers to upgrade smartphones.”
“Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG Research, said the new plans may be altering the historical seasonality and cyclicality of smartphone sales. And AT&T’s own marketing strategy may be less in sync than before with Apple’s, he noted,” Krause reports. “‘AT&T’s device upgrade rate unexpectedly dropped to a record low in Q2 resulting in an estimated 1.2 million fewer smartphones sold than we expected,’ wrote Piecyk in a report published on Tuesday.”
Krause reports, “According to Piecyk’s math, ‘The 1.2 million smartphone miss by AT&T translates to iPhone sales that were 750,000 lower than expected, assuming Apple achieved 60% market share of post-paid smartphone sales and some lightness in pre-paid iPhone sales. In EPS terms, 750,000 phones represent $500 million of revenue and 2 cents in EPS… this 750,000 miss may have contributed to the shortfall that lead to the selloff in Apple’s stock as many expected an additional 2 million iPhones to be sold during the quarter.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good old AT&T.
BTW: Piecyk’s call of 80 million iPhone units sold in the 2015 holiday quarter is quite a statement.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]