AT&T CEO John Stankey says the carrier is seeing strong early demand for the Apple iPhone 14 series, which was unveiled at an event last week.
In an interview with Barron’s at the Goldman Sachs tech conference in San Francisco on Monday, the AT&T chief said that iPhone demand every year tends to be suppressed ahead of the annual Apple phone launch event, and this one is no exception. He says that volumes so far are “in line with what we expected,” but added that a better read on demand will come in the coming holiday selling season. Stankey also said that iPhone 14 carrier incentives across the industry are about in line with previous years.\
On the topic of adding satellite communications capability for mobile-phone customers, he notes that the company is making progress on a trial in partnership with AST SpaceMobile. Stankey said that AT&T’s original goal in exploring satellite connectivity was to provide public-safety customers with access in areas that lack conventional wireless connectivity; he added that the company eventually wants to make that capability available to a broader range of customers. Stankey thinks the company’s approach will offer “far more robust” satellite-based services beyond both the service proposed by T-Mobile US in partnership with SpaceX and the Apple satellite connectivity unveiled last week with Globalstar. He thinks the company’s service will ultimately supplant the service Apple has announced. The company has not yet announced pricing or timing of the commercial launch of the AT&T service with AST.
MacDailyNews Take: All of the reports we’ve seen to date indicate that early iPhone 14 demand, at least for the Pro models, is strong.
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