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to
monitor Apple stores in New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis,
who found that some !!40 percent!! of the phones were sold to
people who purchased more than one phone at a time. “The
majority of the people who were buying more than one phone
were Asian, and they were bringing small buses of people who all
buy more than one phone,” he said. Mr. Munster conjectured that
many of the phones are being resold into Asia. It is hard to
get an iPhone there and, he said, “With the value of the dollar,
the cost of the phone is much less here.” Mr. Munster estimates
that of the 1.7 million phones not activated by AT&T 350,000
were sold through Apple’s partners in Europe, 512,000 were in
inventory at AT&T and the European carriers, and 838,000 were
sold and unlocked. Mr. Sacconaghi figures slightly fewer phones
were sold in Europe and are in inventory, leaving 1 million
unlocked phones. I called Apple’s public relations department,
which, as usual, declined to comment. On its conference call with
analysts earlier this month, Apple said that a significant number
of phones were sold and unlocked. On the face of it, this isn’t
good news for Apple. The company receives a payment estimated to
be about $15 a month, from AT&T and other carriers, for iPhone
accounts that are activated. So every unlocked phone is $360 of
revenue forgone over the two year life of a contract. But there
are a few reasons why we shouldn’t shed a tear for Apple on this
one. For one, it shows great demand for the iPhone, especially
because Apple has not made it easy for people deal in unlocked
phones. With each software update it tries to close the software
loopholes that allowed previous versions to be connected to
unauthorized carriers (although hackers seem to always find new
unlocking methods within weeks). And it restricts the number of
iPhones people can buy at any one time. Mr. Sacconaghi said it is
possible that the gray market dealers, however, have
overestimated demand and have a big inventory backlog
themselves. What is more, both Mr. Munster and Mr.
Sacconaghi are convinced that Apple actually makes money on the
iPhone without taking into account the payments from the carriers.
Mr. Munster estimates that gross profit on each iPhone is about
$50. That doesn’t take into account costs like development and
marketing, but it’s still amazing given the product is so new in
its life cycle. (The cost of making a product tends to go down
faster than its selling price.) If true, Apple’s effective profits
from the iPhone, taking into account the payments from carriers,
are huge even if diluted because a quarter of the phones are being
unlocked. Moreover, Apple has several ways to reduce the percentage
of phones that are being unlocked. The most significant plan is
simply to expand the number of countries in which it sells the
phones, giving buyers in Asia and Latin America a legitimate
alternative to gray market dealers. If Apple still found all this
to be a significant problem, it could certainly require customers
to sign up for a service plan before they left the store. And it
wouldn’t be a surprise if the next generation of iPhone, which
Mr. Munster expects over the summer, has even tougher
ways of keeping the phones locked.
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