All eyes on the Iphone…
In a few short hours, Apple (AAPL) will report on Iphone sales and it is already interesting to read about some of the explanations on why the number will differ from the one reported by AT&T (T) yesterday. That’s because according to this Bloomberg story, AT&T reported activations while Apple “will count sales made to AT&T for distribution and iPhones in transit to AT&T” which sounds an awful lot like the “out the door” accounting method. Footnoted regulars know about my own Iphone experience. It will be interesting to see how the numbers stack up.
Almost as interesting — and getting no attention due to the Iphone — is the OIBDA number that AT&T reported in the morning and then corrected later in the afternoon. Not familiar with OIBDA? It’s a twist on one of my old favorites, EBITDA, and means operating income before depreciation and amortization. The correction was relatively minor — SG&A using OIBDA was really 2.92 billion instead of the $2.89 billion reported initially. But oddly enough — call it accounting magic — the end number, total operating expenses, was exactly the same in both cases.
Also interesting is the use of OIBDA in the first place. In this helpful exhibit, AT&T explains why the number is an important measure of wireless metrics. But it’s a number that the company has only been using for about a year now. And, it’s a number that some of its other competitors, including Verizon (VZ) don’t seem to be using. Indeed, a quick scan of the filings doesn’t turn up a lot of companies — in the wireless business or many other businesses — who seem to use this metric.
Now, back to the wait for those Iphone numbers…
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July 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I can’t remember where, but I’ve read, that Apple is already planning an updated iPhone model, with much less energy consumption, thanks to Transmeta’s LongRun2 technology. Either way, I believe iPhone is going to be HUGE for Apple. AAPL is not showing up on my fundamental screens, but I’m thinking of buying some stock
July 25th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
hmm Just now Bberg TV did story on RBC Capital
prediction of a high side 450k in sales.
Got that based on dif in first 2 day sales vs turned on later count by ATT. Kind of a high
that still doesn’t account for the returns for
sticky keys and other probs. RBC throws in
delayed activation count due to gifts vs instant users. This all seems pretty airy until
a year on year count is made, esp throwing in
how any Euro sales run — hot or cold.
By next year there could be a whole nuther thang to amuse the masses for less coin.
Now that’s a babe magnet (per NYT story) beyond the iPhoney.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Just had to share my iPhone experience… Almost IDENTICAL to yours. Frequent crashes, intermittent speaker, went from 5 Bars to No Service frequently without changing cells or moving. This happened at both my home and office.
I got to know hard and soft reset pretty well. The guys at the AT&T store appreciated my help as they did not know how to reset 2 of their 3 display units which had crashed post release day 1, 2 and 3.
No one at AT&T could help and Apple blamed AT&T network. Finally phone #1 went back to Apple, got a loaner (Phone#2) with the same problem. I got a replacement for #1 (Phone#3) which unfortunately arrived the last day I could return it, so back it went, untested. I figure 2/3 were bad and the third possibly. I’ll wait till Apple gets version 2 out. Besides I was worried the China assembly process probably used lead-based paint (joke).
When it worked, beautiful, intuitive phone, but for me and my network (older network infrastructure) it was too unreliable and Apple clearly cannot troubleshoot cell phones while AT&T claims they are not allowed to…
August 6th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Interesting, Jason, that you would have a similar experience. Wonder how many other folks are out there with similar experiences.