It seems like all the bad news on Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna reception issues is mostly media-driven -- Wall Street has a different view of the situation, and it certainly doesn’t call for anything as dire as a product recall.
9to5Mac is reporting that Wall Street analysts don’t seem to be shaken much by all the bad press Apple is getting over the iPhone 4’s alleged antenna reception issues. Despite all the rumblings of a major product recall, most analysts seem to think the solution to Cupertino’s “death grip” problem is simple: If wearing a Bumper on your iPhone 4 fixes the issue, give people free Bumpers.
“To date, we have not seen any overwhelming evidence of iPhone 4 units being returned,” Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes told The Wall Street Journal, calling all of the media reports on the “death grip” issue “overblown.”
Citigroup’s Richard Gardner agrees, and feels that the possibility of a product recall on the iPhone to be “very low.” His firm’s stance on the subject is that the antenna reception quirk on the iPhone 4 is definitely not serious enough to warrant such a drastic measure.
Despite that stance, Gardner has been critical of Apple’s response to the issue so far, but he has a solution for the company: Give every customer a free Bumper case, if that indeed resolves the signal attenuation issue as both Apple and CEO Steve Jobs have claimed.
Calling such a measure a “fair and very cost-effective” solution, Gardner expects such a move would only impact Apple’s profit margins by a few percent. The analyst maintains a $330 per share target on the iPhone 4 maker, despite the drama currently swirling around the device.
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