Piper Jaffray Maintains Overweight on Apple Ahead of Verizon and AT&T Threshold Upgrades

Piper Jaffray has published a research report on Apple

commenting on AT&T

and Verizon

need to upgrade thresholds to support the new iPhone 5. In the report, Piper Jaffray writes, "Potential changes to iPhone subsidies have been an area of investor focus. The bottom line is we expect both AT&T and Verizon's (~12% of Apples revenue) upgrade threshold to be 20 months for the iPhone 5 release (October), with some potential AT&T exceptions for highly valued customers to get an upgrade after 18 months. In the past AT&T's upgrade thresholds have been 11 months (3GS), 12 months (4), and 18 months (4S). Verizon is essentially unchanged at 20 months from the 4S launch. While this threshold is slightly less generous than past upgrades, due to the high level of expected interest in the iPhone 5, we don't believe less favorable upgrade windows will have a measurable impact on demand and we remain comfortable with our 49 m unit estimate (up 32% y/y) for the Dec-12 quarter." Piper Jaffray maintains its Overweight rating and $910 price target on Apple, which is currently trading down $0.42 from yesterday's $564.29 closing price.