Power to the iPhone people!

I read the New York Post every now and again to revel in the torture of New Yorkers by Boston sports teams, and found this article about some "dopes" to use NYP's term who stole a bunch of iPhones.

There are tons of them being sold unlocked in Asia.

Re: unlocking, CNN reports yesterday (Jan 28 07) that the missing 1.7 million iPhones are causing analysts to become concerned.

I think they're overlooking the ones in inventory at Apple. It's typical for any mfr to carry 30-90 days stock on hand, and analysts are happier with 90, to ensure no disruptions in sales.

Of course, that's altogether misleading -- what we're talking about is 1.7 million registrations with AT&T.

And 1.7 million is a boatload. As the CNN article points out, this is costing Apple as much as $700 million+ in current and future revenue, which folks are subtracting from share prices. So even if analysts are full of poo, this is definitely one of the factors affecting the rapidly declining Q1 share prices...which, between MacWorld buzz and Q4 sales, is usually sharply up.

But the negative buzz from MacWorld is a big deal. Last year the stock went up 10% during the keynote. This year, it went down.

This year's q4 report is what spilled the beans on the missing activations.

Here's the deal: unlocking iPhones is a breeze. You can find instructions all over the web, including YouTube. Find the links yourself.

There are also crazy numbers of iPhone hacking sites, including iphonehacks.com. They're less concerned with unlocking them (more accurately described as cracking) than true hacking, which is having some fun -- mostly around adding 3rd party apps. Which is indeed some fun. Check around the web -- you'll see tons of info on this, including non-hacker sites like c|net and engadget.

BTW, there is an iPhone hacker convention. It's called MacWorld. The hackers don't have booths, but they're there, in big numbers if you know where to look.

I read the New York Post every now and again to revel in the torture of New Yorkers by Boston sports teams

Oh we'll see how smug you are about 11pm this Sunday. I'll definitely be in the Big Blue corner wearing my well worn Phil Simms jersery. But I digress....

And 1.7 million is a boatload. As the CNN article points out, this is costing Apple as much as $700 million+ in current and future revenue, which folks are subtracting from share prices.

And that is the crux of the article I referred to in my original post before we were thrown off track in the discussion. The unlocked phones severely hamper Apple's income as they receive significant shares for ever subsciber to at&t's network. If they have sold 4 million phones and only 1.7 million are registered, then that really hits Apple in the wallet.

What this tells me is that many people, including myself, who said that Apple was shooting themselves in the foot by exclusively lining up with at&t are now potentially being proved right. Had Apple followed the business model of Motorola with it's incredibly successful Razr series, and opened up the iPhone for use with all the major carriers, they most likely would have easily surpassed 10 million phones sold. And they would be making money off all the registrations as well.

It will be interested to see how this moves forward as Apple still intends to get to the 10 million sold mark by the end of this year. But if less than 1/2 of those are actually registered to the "correct" network, it's not going to be much money for Apple.

And an astute observation on the market shares going down. It seems a lot of analysts are as excited about the MacBook Air as we were in the previous blog discussion. As in not very impressed or excited at all.

Walter Biscardi, Jr. www.biscardicreative.com

Thanks! Most of my observations are described as "ass toot."

BTW, I have a bunch of Super Bowl posts on the way, starting tomorrow. 

But not about the game. About the REALLY important stuff. Stay tuned. ;-)