Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, has done some calculations to quantify the hunch that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has sort of taken on part of the business model of carriers, in that it can afford to subsidize the iPhone a bit and get the money back from the usage fees. “The report estimates that Apple will sell seven million phones in its fiscal 2008, generating $1.05 billion from the sale of the phones and $715 million from carrier payments. That’s 41 percent of Apple’s iPhone revenues” notes the New York Times
(that equates to about $8.51 per customer per month). There’s a couple of points which should be noted about those figures—the carrier payments is only for one year, and it’s reasonable for the carrier to be making payments for at least two years (the length of the contract)...so you can double that $715 million figure. Also, it’s not just revenue, it’s mostly profits (the figure for the sale of hardware comes out at $150 per iPhone, so that must be refering to profit as well). Of course, that doesn’t count any revenues from iTunes…