Mobile phone operators subsidize a very large part of the price of iPhone terminals at the request of Apple and it seems that some companies I'm starting to lose money because of this. The reason would not lie in the poor sales of the terminal, but in the upgrade policy instituted by the operators, a policy that some now regret. The operator who subsidizes a terminal expects to recover the money and make a profit in two years, but some operators offer users the option to buy a new iPhone at a subsidized price just one year after the last purchase. This policy generated quite large losses for some operators and the problem seems to find a solution in reducing the subsidies offered for the terminal.
Piecyk asserts that after raising average revenue per user (ARPU) by churning customers with subsidies, telecoms are going to begin contracting in subsidy payouts which will leave Apple with less iPhone sales in its third fiscal quarter. "Operators, unwilling to stall the pace of ARPU growth, offered generous upgrade policies including some that enabled a fully subsidized phone upgrade only one year in to a two year contract," explains Piecyk. "We expect those policies to change as the faster upgrade rate of smartphones compared to legacy feature phones has been a costly surprise to post-paid and pre-paid operators, alike."
Apple forces operators to offer iPhone terminals at a subsidized price for people to buy them, but they no longer seem willing to give up profit just to have the iPhone on offer, and this could lead to a decrease in sales of iPhone terminals. AT&T, the largest customer of Apple in the USA, is decided to implement much stricter rules for the purchase of a new iPhone terminal in the case of customers who have not yet paid a contract for an old iPhone, and the same thing could be done by other operators in the whole world.
It is estimated that Apple could lose billions of dollars every fiscal quarter because of these measures because the operators want to have a profit similar to that obtained by Apple, but I think that in the end the company from Cupertino will have to find a solution by which to " reconcile" operators.
