Attack of the iPhone Teardowns!
Say you stand in line Friday to buy an iPhone, what will be the first you do with it when you get home? Send an email? Browse the web? Download some music? Or, maybe tear it to pieces?Yes, tearing iPhones to pieces. A significant set of people are going to spend Friday night and part of the weekend buying iPhones and taking them apart for teardown analyses. The goal, of course, is to figure out who the main component suppliers are for the iPhone, both from a competitive standpoint, as well as from an investmenting point-of-view.
I know of three market research companies planning to do teardowns this weekend, plus a number of wireless companies and investment banks. One wireless company with which I'm aware plans to buy six iPhones on Friday and tear down three. Don't even ask why they need to tear down so many, but they are.
As a quick flashback to the past, here are some articles speculating about iPhone components.
- Apple iPhone fuels speculation on design wins (EETimes)
- Apple ups Balda orders for iPhone screens (Reuters)
- iPhone plays (Stockpickr)
AT&T, with 61 million users, holds about 26 percent of the 223 million U.S. mobile-phone accounts, based on data from the company and from the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. Verizon has 59 million customers and a 25 percent share, while Sprint has 53.1 million, or 23 percent.1By the end of 2008, the iPhone may cost Verizon 949,000 subscribers, McCormack said.
Sprint is more vulnerable because unlike Verizon, the company doesn't own home-phone lines. Wireless revenue represented 86 percent of Sprint's sales in 2006, compared with 43 percent at Verizon, holder of a 55 percent stake in Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless.
Customers of Sprint also tend to be younger and technology- savvy, making them the perfect iPhone converts, said John Hodulik, a UBS AG analyst in New York who rates Sprint and Verizon a ``neutral.''
