financial news

According to analyst Ben Reitzes with Barclays, the App Store is helping Apple to build valuable customer loyalty among iPhone and iPod touch users. His argument is that the wide variety and good quality of apps available in the App Store is helping them to stop their users from switching to other devices from the iPhone or iPod touch.

AT&T announced today that despite the poor state the economy is in, the iPhone and iPhone 3G has continued to drive growth in company by drawing in new high-profit subscribers to their 2 year contracts. The company says they have activated .9 million new iPhones during the quarter, less than the previous 2.4mil for Q3, but still played a significant role.

The latest survey by ChangeWave has found that the iPhone has risen in smartphone market share to 23%, up from the 11% they were found to have in July. The increase shows that they are quickly catching up to RIM, which remains the leader at 41%, and only slipped 1% in the same time.

The iPhone has displayed a 327.5% gain in market share in the worldwide smartphone market for the third quarter this year, rising from 3.4% to 12.9% in just the quarter, despite the slowing worldwide economy's effect on smartphone sales. iPhone sales have also passed sales of Windows Mobile devices in North America for the first time.

According to a research note by Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, the iPhone 3G has managed to rescue the world's smartphone market from a decline this past summer. It rose to claim roughly 16.6% of the world's smartphone market by the end of the most recent quarter back in September and places Apple beneath only Nokia.

UBS analyst Maynard Um corroborated claims from earlier this week that Apple would be cutting their production. Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Craig Berger stated that Apple would be cutting their iPhone 3G production by a 40%. Now Um has found evidence in the supply chain that iPhone levels are down by 1.7 million to 2.3 million.

SingTel, the official iPhone carrier in Singapore, Australia, and the Philippines and India, has announced that they have sold 170,000 iPhones since they launched the handset in early July and late August in their respective countries. Not all the news is good, however. They're claiming now that the heavy subsidies they're providing are really starting to dig into their profits.

According to a report by Craig Berger, analyst with Friedman Billings Ramsey, Apple has cut their Q4 production of the iPhone 3G by more than was anticipated. Onlookers were expecting them to cut production by around 10% as a sequential production drop, but Berger claims Apple may cut it by "more than 40%" than their Q3 numbers.

Growing iPhone sales have placed Apple among the top ten cellphone suppliers in the US, moving to the number six spot, bumping RIM off the bottom of the list. The company snatched 2.3% market share in Q3. Surprisingly, despite the apparent oncoming economic downturn, much of the sales seen during the quarter came from low-inome households.

iPhone carriers across the world are seeing significant increases in profit due to the device, according to a recent report. Both Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless and Softbank in Japan reported strong demand for the device, with the Japanese carrier reporting a 1.9% climb in the September quarter.