Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Tex]

Missing phones

The article title is misleading. They show math of 1.4 million not activated, of which quite a few were sold legitimately for unlocked use. The "missing" number was under 700k. The question is how many are in their gift box waiting for an old contract to run out, how many were disassembled for parts for analysis, how many were stolen and are being slowly eBayed, how many were unlocked by folks who didn't like the terms of service, and so on. Apple's point is that it just doesn't know yet. Fair enough.

The next time Apple cuts the price, they need to go with a rebate based on activation with a carrier. It wont be as clean a process as Apple normally likes, but it could help slow down sales of unlocked handsets.

Actually, since activation runs through iTunes, Apple could do this pretty easily. Apple could process the rebate straight to the carrier on activation, or issue some kind of credit, or what have you. Good idea to connect price change to activation

June would be ok if they are launching the 3G version then....but if it is an announcement with sales in October/November, Apple will have a problem

Apple will definitely talk about the iPhone dev kit. Whether Apple talks about 3G will, of course, turn on its release date, which in turn will surely turn on the availability of the components on which it depends.

I think app releases are a key piece of news going forward for this platform. Identifying new sources of support will be interesting to see where there's interest for adoption. I know some folks who want to see Hippocrates on iPhone, and it'll be interesting to see what other apps are demanded, and which show up unexpectedly.

The OS on the iPhone puts it over the top, but it seems that consumers are looking at least as much at camera quality and 3G when making their buying decisions.

The camera sucks, frankly. If the target is moving at all you get a worthless blur. I'm definitely behind Apple needing to think of a different solution for the phone.

Take care,
--Tex.