“Verizon is due to report its Q1 earnings tomorrow, and while that is obviously a big deal to Verizon investors, this quarter Apple investors may also have a surprisingly large stake in what Verizon has to say,” Max Greve writes for Seeking Alpha. “Specifically, Verizon’s subscriber count may tell us something about the state of the iPhone, Apple’s most important product.”
“A strong subscriber outperformance suggests that iPhone subsidies still work, a weak one suggests that they’re losing their heft,” Greve writes. “But since Verizon also started offering unlimited data at the same time, one data point from Verizon won’t really be conclusive. What would make things even better would be if T-Mobile, which made no other major changes last quarter, also reported a strong net add. In point of fact Apple cares about all four carriers reports, including Sprint and AT&T which didn’t offer iPhone subsidies in first quarter.
“From Apple’s perspective, the best outcome in the coming weeks would be for Verizon and T-Mobile to both report strong, and Sprint and AT&T to underperform,” Greve writes. “The subsidized win and the others lose.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Such an outcome would be even more proof that there is really only one maker of aspirational smartphones: Apple.
If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.
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Apple smashes Street; iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch set all-time records – January 31, 2017
