business

We knew the iPhone was exceptionally profitable for Apple, but a report from Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff finds it to be on a much larger scale than we expected. According to his findings, the iPhone has only 1% of the unit market share in the cellphone industry, but the revenue Apple rakes in from it is a colossal 20% of the whole industry.

As an outsider, news of the iPhone's success in Japan appears at first glance to be a testament to it's success, but according to a local industry executive, it owes a great deal of it's popularity in Japan to their cellphone industry's failure. Tsuyoshi Natsuno, a former executive with NTT DoCoMo says that the industry has fallen into a "collegial system" where a phone's design is controlled by the carrier and is locked to it, something he says removes incentive for driving technology forward.

We knew from early on that AT&T had agreed to pay Apple in exchange for exclusivity in the US after which the iPhone would be unlocked, but the exact date that their deal would expire has remained a mystery until today. Similarly, little is known about why AT&T changed from their previous payments to Apple to heavily subsidizing the devices. In what is a rare peak at the inner dealings between Apple and a carrier, USA Today claims to have inside information on both subjects.