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Apple forcing operators to buy phones - even if they can't sell them

• salient 13y ago
  This is also the reason why Apple started counting "shipped" iPhones this year, starting with that "record 9 million iPhones in first weekend", that everyone thought were sold to customers, but in fact they were just shipped to carriers. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/24/apples-9-million-iphones-may-not-be-so-impressive.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/24/apples-9-mi...
  • astrodust 13y ago
    I don't think Apple has a large inventory just sitting around. They used to do "channel stuffing" in the worst way possible back before Jobs, it was almost criminally bad, but under Cook they've been running really lean. Carriers might resent having to purchase so many, but I'm skeptical they're stuck with unsold inventory.
• guiambros 13y ago
  "The deals for the Galaxy S4 were almost as restrictive as Apple's," one source said. "But Samsung has a range of phones, and operators had choices." Well, operators have choices. They can simply decide to not purchase Apple phones - at least not in the 20 billion dollars scale.