Despite losing a bit of its celebrity-like status to the upstart iPad, Apple’s iPhone, which has been around since 2007, brings home more profit for the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant. Earlier this week, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told reporters the company makes $625 on each handset, compared to $600 per iPad.
The chief reason for the disparity is the iPhone is subsidized by carriers hoping to use the iconic handset to lure lucrative data plans. As a result, Apple sells the iPhone for about $625 per unit and carriers reduce the price for customers. But will that change when the Verizon iPhone and the iPad 2 appear next month?
Verizon Wireless, after a long-rumored romance of Apple (much of it played out in the headlines) will begin selling the iPhone next month. Apple is likely to also announce its next-generation iPad about the same time. The products could include subsidies that for the first time may level the playing field.
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.
