Stocks soar for Apple, iPhone component suppliers on handset's early success

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 7/6/2007

Making good on what many industry watchers said was an unprecedented amount of hype leading up to its June 29 debut, the first week on the market for the iPhone has proven to be a success for Apple Inc. Indeed, the handset's sales were said to have hit more than 500,000 in its first weekend on the market, and Apple’s stock hit a new record high this morning, trading at $133.34 within the first hour of the day’s market open.

And it is not only Apple that has benefited from the early success of the iPhone. After teardowns uncovered the component suppliers for Apple's first mobile phone offering, the companies that are now known to be at the core of the iPhone are also enjoying stock market boosts worldwide.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which is said to have contributed nearly a third of the iPhone's hardware components, has seen its stock pick up steam as news has spread from iPhone autopsies. As of this morning, Samsung's stock was trading on the Korean stock exchange at $682.17 (627,000 Korean won), about 12.3 percent higher than the company's opening price Monday morning of $607.10 (558,000 Korean won).

ARM Holdings plc, the U.K.-based intellectual property supplier that has its technology used in the iPhone's Samsung-made applications processor, has seen stock market success in the past week, as well. The company's shares closed at a price of $9.27 on Thursday afternoon, up 6.3 percent from its closing price last Friday, the day the iPhone went on sale, of $8.75. The company's stock opened this morning at $9.20 per share.

Also seeing a boost from its inclusion in the iPhone is Germany-based Infineon Technologies AG, which has silicon content found to represent some 6.1 percent of the 8GByte version of the product's total bill-of-materials (BOM) cost. Infineon's stock opened at a price of $17.45 this morning, up 5.5 percent from last Friday's close of $16.53 and marking a 52-week high.

Also based in Germany, Balda AG, which has touch screen technology in the iPhone, comprising 10.8 percent of the 8GByte BOM cost, has seen a boost in its stock traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange from a closing price of $10.61 on Friday June 29 to a opening price of $11.40 this morning, a 7.4 percent increase.
 
Meanwhile, National Semiconductor Corp., which contributed one chip to the iPhone design, has seen its stock price grow from $28.27 at last Friday's close to an opening price today of $28.78, a growth of some 1.8 percent.

For more on this topic, see our EDN guide to the Apple iPhone.