Enough already about 10M iPhone Target…

by Kris_Tuttle on February 28, 2008

Every week we have to endure news sto­ries about whether Apple will or will not make their 10M iPhone tar­get this year. 

The answer is sim­ple.  They will def­i­nitely make it.  How­ever that’s not really the ques­tion.  The ques­tion how and at what mar­gin?  Car­ri­ers and con­sumers all want the iPhone so it’s not a ques­tion of demand.  If Apple has to they will enhance the terms they offer car­ri­ers around the world to get the dis­tri­b­u­tion they need.

Thanks to lower com­po­nent costs and typ­i­cal scale ben­e­fits Apple will also have price as a weapon later in the year as well, prob­a­bly with­out hurt­ing margins. 

It’s fine to con­tinue to track units, car­rier plans, prices and mar­gins but the focus on the 10M phone tar­get is not the ball to keep an eye on.

Growth, mar­ket share, mar­gins, prod­uct cycles, cash flow, returns on invested cap­i­tal anyone?

– Kris Tuttle

(Research 2.0 has a long posi­tion in Apple shares.)

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