Another theory on the ‘missing’ iPhones

Posted by Dennis Sellers Jan 25, 2008 at 3:33pm

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster has another take on the purported plethora of “missing” iPhones. It involves Europe, unlocked iPhones and channel inventory.

But let’s recap: there are discrepancies between the figures of AT&T and Apple’s latest financial reports. AT&T, the exclusive American carrier of the iPhone, says it activated just 900,000 iPhones during the fourth quarter. It wrapped up the year with “just at or slightly under 2 million iPhone customers,” according to company executives. However, at last week’s Macworld Conference & Expo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that Apple has sold four million iPhones through the middle of January. So what are the extra iPhones?

Munster says that he thinks 350,000 were sold in Europe and assumes that 25 percent of U.S. phones sold have been unlocked, reports Barron’s. That leaves 2.5125 million phones eligible for activation. Remove the two million we know are activated, and you get inventory of 512,500 phones.

Barrons’ says Munster feels normal channel inventory for the phone is five weeks. If that’s true, it would imply sales of about 100,000 phones a week. Which would suggest annual sales of 5.3 million. Apple has said it will sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. “Ergo, Munster’s logic would imply no excess inventory,” notes Barron’s.

You can read the entire story here.

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