Here is your daily Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for October 8th, 2010. Months before iTunes officially controls 70% of music sales in the western world comes the latest rumor that Apple’s ubiquitous music store will become a subscription service. Also new word of a CDMA iPhone has come down the pipeline and lastly one analyst says investors should be expecting a “blowout” come Apple’s earnings report.
Apple Reignites iTunes Subscription Plan Rumors: Looks like new social network Ping didn’t encompass all of AAPL’s new plans for their iTunes digital music business. A New York Post report published today says that AAPL is in talks with music labels about repositioning iTunes as a subscription service. AAPL iTunes head Eddy Cue is said to be personally contacting record label executives to pitch them the new membership business model that would have iTunes users paying a monthly fee between $10 and $15 for limited access to archival music. This would be in addition to the existing pay-per-download iTunes service. A paid iTunes subscription service has been hinted at in the past, most recently after AAPL acquired streaming music website Lala. The Cupertino, Calif. company was expected to incorporate Lala’s streaming, cloud-based music delivery when they announced iTunes 10 in September but did not make an announcement. The Post report also says that AAPL is looking to convince music labels to not support the Lala-style digital music service Spotify when it launches in the United States later this year. AAPL claims that services like Spotify and Lala will only further reduce already tepid album sales.
CDMA iPhone for China Telecom in Early 2011: China Unicom (NYSE: CHU) and AAPL Inc. are having a good year in China. The iPhone 4 sold out before even going on sales last month, and recently released WiFi-enabled versions of the iPhone 3GS and iPad have been performing very well for AAPL’s major carrier in the country. Like AAPL’s profitable relationship with AT&T (NYSE: T) in the United States, China Unicom’s exclusive support of the iPhone in China might be coming to an end in the near future. A report in the South China Morning Post, citing a Deutsche Bank analyst note, says that AAPL will begin offering a CDMA iPhone through the country’s third-largest mobile phone carrier, China Telecom (NYSE: CHA). The proposed CDMA iPhone would operate on the same CDMA2000 EV-DO 3G standard as Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in the U.S. This report correlates with J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz’s predictions from earlier this week, pointing to a CDMA iPhone for Verizon’s 3G network in early 2011, with the same handset going to China Telecom by the middle of next year.
Analyst Predicts “Blowout” Earnings Report from AAPL: AAPL will give their quarterly earnings report on Monday, October 18th, and analysts are all predicting record numbers based on the strong performance of the iPad and iPhone 4. Analysts from J.P. Morgan and Ticonderoga Securities have raised expectations sky high for AAPL’s quarterly report, both predicting target prices of over $400 per share. Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner has more tempered expectations. In his Friday note to investors, Reiner reiterated Oppenheimer’s previous stance that AAPL is underperforming, its current stock price not reflecting the company’s business strengths despite being up 37% overall this year. The reason for this, according to Reiner, is AAPL’s size. His target price is a modest (by comparison) $345 per share and he says investors should expect $19.9 billion in revenue following 12 million iPhone sales and 4.5 million iPads sold. Reiner says that Apple’s report will be a “blowout” and that investors can expect the company to continue to expand.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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