Here is your daily Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for Friday, July 23, 2010. Apple Inc. began officially apologizing for “Antennagate” today, kicking off their program to distribute free bumper cases to iPhone 4 owners. Also, LG announces that they’re having trouble keeping up production to meet with iPad demand.
Apple Hands Out Free iPhone 4 Bumper Cases: Never let it be said that Steve Jobs isn’t a man of his word. Following through on promises made during last week’s press conference responding to the scandal surrounding the Apple iPhone 4’s faulty antenna, Apple Inc. began their program to issue free bumper cases to owners of the new smartphone. iPhone 4 customers can visit AAPL’s website for details on how to acquire the protective case said to alleviate the new iPhone’s technical problems, but to actually apply for a case, users have to download the “iPhone 4 Case Program” application to their phone from the App Store. Customers who purchase an iPhone between now and September 30 can take advantage of the program, but anyone who purchased an iPhone prior to July 23 has to apply for a bumper case no later than August 22. AAPL has also started automatically refunding customers who purchased an iPhone 4 bumper case between the smartphone’s release and the announcement of the free case program.
LG Having Trouble Producing Enough Screens to Meet iPad Demand: The Apple iPad is popular. Very popular. You might say that it is selling very well. So well in fact that LG, the Korean electronics company that produces the iPad’s LCD screen, will be unable to produce enough screens to meet current iPad demand until Spring 2011. CEO Kwon Young-soo announced that, while the company is actually going to cut production of LCD television screens due to lack of demand, they’re not able to keep up with Apple’s needs. Talking with Reuters, Kwon said, “Demand (from AAPL) keeps growing and we can’t meet it all. Apple may have to delay launched of the iPad for some countries due to tight component supplies.” Apple announced last week that they would be launching the iPad in 9 more countries later this year, launches that will presumably need to be pushed back due to LG’s inability to produce enough screens for the current iPad market. For a better idea of current iPad demand, research group iSuppli raised their forecast for iPad sales in 2010 by 82 percent following earnings reports from both Apple and AT&T (NYSE: T). iSuppli now expects Apple to sell 13 million iPads before the year is out.
AT&T Activates 3.2 Million iPhones, 500,000 iPads: AT&T boasted some big numbers during their financial reports after markets closed yesterday. While Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones worldwide in their last quarter, 3.2 million of those iPhones were sold through AT&T here in the United States. AT&T also announced that they activated between 400,000 and 500,000 iPads in the same period. While these are inarguably strong numbers, they don’t represent significant growth. AT&T also activated 3.2 million iPhones during the same period in 2009, and only a fraction of those activated in 2010 represented new customers. Of the 3.2 million new phones activated, just 860,000 were new AT&T customers. This stagnation betrays Apple’s need to branch out to new service providers despite strong business with AT&T.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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