Apple iPhone sales expectations could be at risk if Apple’s current problems with the iPhone 4’s antenna increases, one analyst warned investors Tuesday. “Should this antenna issue become a bigger deal, there could be risk to our as well as consensus estimates,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu wrote.
However, the analyst reaffirmed his estimate of 7.5 million iPhones sold in the June quarter and 40 million for calendar 2010. “So far, in our supply chain and industry checks, we have not seen any change in build patterns or demand patterns,” he added.
Monday, Consumer Reports failed to recommend the iPhone 4 due to reception problems. The announcement set off a flurry of activity, ranging from reports Apple censored discussion of the failure to talk a product recall was ‘inevitable.’
Wu believes the tide of bad news for Apple could be stemmed by simply discounting or giving away bumpers that prevent the reception trouble. Reportedly, the Cupertino, Calif. company has instructed AppleCare support workers they are not “appeasing customers with free bumpers.”
Earlier this month, Apple announced the problem was a software glitch giving users a mistaken impression they had a stronger signal than the iPhone 4 actually received.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
