Does AT&T turn into a pumpkin in June?
Its Cinderella contract with Apple for the iPhone runs out in seven months, says one analyst
Brian Marshall. Image: Bloomberg
Broadpoint AmTech's Brian Marshall, who has replaced Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster as the most bullish of the mainstream Apple analysts, made several assertions of fact in an Bloomberg TV interview Friday that — if true — struck me as newsworthy. Chief among them:
- The contract that gives AT&T (T) exclusive access in the U.S. to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone expires in June 2010.
- Apple is now getting a $450 subsidy from AT&T for each iPhone it sells; after June, that subsidy will be reduced to $300 for all carriers, domestic and international.
- The 4% of AT&T subscribers who use the iPhone consume roughly 40% of the network's bandwidth.
Here and in a research note issued last late month, Marshall has been lobbying heavily for Apple to start selling the iPhone through Verizon (VZ). It turns out he may have personal reasons for doing so. He told Bloomberg's Pimm Fox that whenever he travels to New York or San Francisco with his iPhone he gets dropped calls "all the time."
"A very frustrating experience," he said, "but I'm not going to move away because Apple has their hooks into me"
You can hear all this, plus what Marshall has to say about the Chinese iPhone market, Windows 7's effect on Mac sales and Apple's 2010 earnings, in the interview posted below the fold.
UPDATE: Financial Alchemist's Turley Muller takes issue virtually everything Marshall says in this interview. See here.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
Will Windows 7 boost Apple sales?
Over the past decade, Mac shipments have grown with nearly every new Microsoft release
As if Steve Ballmer didn't have enough to worry about after last week's Sidekick/Microsoft (MSFT) Danger debacle, here's a bar graph that may add to his miseries.
The graphic (shown full-size below the fold) comes out of a report to clients issued Monday by Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall. Anticipating the release of Windows 7 next week (Oct. 22), Marshall reviewed Mac sales figures over the past 10 years to analyze the impact of the four previous Windows launches:
- Windows 98 (launched on June 25, 1998)
- Windows 2000 (launched on February 17, 2000)
- Windows XP (launched on October 25, 2001)
- Windows Vista (launched on January 30, 2007)
His findings: More
