Will AT&T's bad news feed the Apple blues?

Not saying it won't fall further, but T CEO stated they were seeing strength in wireless. AAPL is getting hit along with the rest of the market.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/live-att-ceo-randall-stephenson-at-citi-conference.html

2:18 Q&A begins. Rollins: Where is best growth?
2:19 Revenue story begins with wireless. iPhone "driving a lot of it." A lot of "runway left" in terms of penetration. Data ARPU grew at 60% last quarter. (Q3 or Q4?) Legacy AT&T was shrinking, now growing.
2:21 Lion's share of rest of wireless penetration will come from prepaid. We like prepaid. Growing at a robust rate. "Dominated by AT&T and TracPhone," which runs on AT&T's network.
2:23 Gotta get people to 3G devices: Their ARPU goes up 20% from older phones. Only 10% of subs have 3G right now. PDAs/smartphone subscriber ARPU goes up 120%. A lot of headroom left on data.
2:25 LTE & 4G: We want to move to LTE as quickly as we can. Standards out end of year (maybe). Scale won't come til 2012 or 2013. A four-year-out technology before you truly begin to scale it.
2:29 Customers reacting to economic softness? On enterprise, it's a big unknown. Seeing it on the broadband and access-line side. "We're really experiencing softness on the consumer side of the house from the economy."
2:32 Where is economic weakness on consumer side? People aren't paying their bills and are getting cut off. Not so much in wireless. As economy gets soft, wireless becomes the last thing they get rid of, landline becomes one of the first they cut off.

To quote Mick Jagger from "Gimme Shelter," "Brothers and sisters just cool out. 5% unemployment, no big deal, pretty much full employment. Countrywide goes broke. Now are you surprised? This was an easy call. Sub-primes will hurt but we'll survive. The big problem? Consumer debt & spending. Methinks thou seest a rate cut on the horizon. Do you really think Paulson will let the country swing in the breeze during an election year? Finally in regard to Apple. Let's see Americans are going to stop using computers and go back to the abacus and forget that damn Iphone that sucker's out the window too. They'll never change that thing at all. Steve will just keep pushing the same damn products until the company goes Atari. Forget the stores they suck too but if you visit one this weekend you'll probably have to wait in line an hour to find out just how bad they suck. At the moment Apple is overpriced and a screaming buy. Overpriced for tomorrow and a screaming bargain for Nov. 08. Time to cowboy up kids. This is where the real cash can be made. What's the p/e of the Dow now? 13?

Beltway Greg

I actually think that on the consumer level, this is very good news. Just another nail in the exclusivity deal coffin with AT&T. I strongly believe that apple will now start moving out, and spreading iphone to global providers more freely, a fact that will make the ~171$ a joke in the upcoming few months. This is a real opportunity, and its rarely as clear as this.