Posted on Monday, June 23 2008 @ 22:35 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Analysts believe AT&T may be paying Apple $425 in subsidies per iPhone:
As a general rule, wireless carriers pay about $200 to subsidize the price of a smartphone. But AT&T may be paying Apple $325 per unit for right of carriage, Oppenheimer financial analyst Yair Reimer wrote in a report.
Additionally, Reimer said AT&T will pay another $100 for subscribers signed up in Apple stores. When you add these figures to the retail price of the handset, AT&T could be paying as much as $624 for the 8-GB iPhone 3G, and $724 for the 16-GB version.
Representatives from Apple and AT&T didn't comment, but other analysts said Apple is receiving a tidy sum from the wireless carrier.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated in a report Apple will receive an average of $466 per iPhone. Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi said in a report that he expects iPhones to be sold to carriers for anywhere from $350 to $700 each.
Source: InformationWeek
