AT&T claims 146,000 iPhone activations on launch weekend
Just how many activations transpired during that first monumental weekend of iPhone sales? 500,000? 1 million? Nay, only 146,000 activations in those record-setting two days where finding an iPhone was comparable to last year’s Christmas rush and the Nintendo Wii. Sure, those numbers are nothing to bat your eyelashes at; on the contrary, they are QUITE impressive. Did the iPhone really bomb, however, or were the predictions by supposed industry experts completely out of line?
For our purposes, let’s be generous and give AT&T retail stores roughly 50 units a store at launch? Mind you most stores received additional shipments the following day, but let’s look at the first day, in which every AT&T store depleted their stock. It’s been reported that AT&T operates "more than 1,800 retail store locations," so that will put us at 90,000 iPhones sold in these locations. Click on for the rest of our sales predictions!
Again, for our purposes, let’s estimate stock at the 164 Apple stores nationwide in the neighborhood of 2,000. We know first day sales estimates at the Fifth Avenue (New York) and Lenox Square (Atlanta) stores were in the neighborhood of $2 million and $600K, respectively, so that would give us rough estimations of 3,000 and 900 units sold in either store. For that launch weekend, we’ll use 2,000 as the base sales estimate for each Apple store, placing us at roughly 328,000 units sold.
This would bring our very rough estimate to 418,000 iPhones sold on launch weekend. In hindsight, perhaps Apple and AT&T’s greatest success for both customers and sales personnel on launch weekend – the convenience of purchasing the device at a retail store and activating it at home – may have been their greatest disaster. At a ratio of one-in-three devices activated, one would have to wonder what that number would look like if they forced activations upon purchase rather than shooting for customer convenience and record-setting sales number. These impressive numbers may not necessarily hurt Apple’s iPocketBook, but they would represent a disaster for AT&T. Perhaps 146,000 activations, or roughly $11 million in monthly revenue, is not that bad of a number, but it fails in comparison to industry estimates for sales and expected revenue based on these sales numbers.
Apple’s stock tumbled $8.81 per share on NASDAQ.
Even our resident BlackBerry expert Jibi is wondering how these numbers are a bad thing for Apple. For a hardware manufacturer, what do activations have to do with total unit sales numbers? Apple sold 400-500,000 devices in two days. AT&T only activated a third of these, which is a direct impact on monthly service plan revenue and perhaps that impacts the unique revenue and profit sharing between the two companies, but how does this really impact Apple’s bottom line for the sales figures for this device? What do you guys think?
Yes but greg when people hit the button at the end it has to get the info to ATT, and it appears that the everything on the ATT side was going wrong with these customers. iTunes merely gathers the info for ATT and submits it and then activates the phone.
What was going wrong on the at&t side? Do you even know that? There was information missing, incorrect information, even just little things like misspelling one or two words or putting something in wrong. There was more error from Apple and the Customer than with at&t. All of those things are easily avoidable and fixable by people who do it for a living.
And as for everybody not wanting to deal with sales people or stores or competition. Go live under a rock. Your never going to fully get away from it. And Pat, ALL SALESPEOPLE FOR WIRELESS PROVIDERS work on commision. If you hate sales people so much, just dont buy anything. And I hope you get what you need and know all of your choices by yourself. You must to a crapload of research to not need salespeople.
…I hate people
and thats why people hate salespeople.
well there are other reasons too.
Yea, that’s why I enjoyed buying my phone at the Apple store.
Actually, the ironic part about it is that I went to an AT&T store first and stood around trying to get someone to help me for ten minutes. When nobody even made eye contact with me (the universal sign from a customer that they are ready to be helped) I walked out and went to the Apple store, where the sales reps were more than happy to get me a nice 8GB phone without trying to get me to buy more stuff.
And yes I can live without sales people. It’s called buying online and at places where the sales associates are not paid on commission. Commissioned sales associates have to be the most annoying thing around.
The real problem with the activation delay due to it simply just being backed up (I mean cmon whatever the number was it was atleast 150k being activated over a 2 day period which just simply isn’t normal) was the fact that ATTs main business/revenue comes from business accounts and there were a lot of customers who had business accounts wither they knew it or not and found out AFTER they had it that they needed to complete a TOS because a lot of reps weren’t advising the customer at the point of sale… AND on top of that the NBO department that handles business 2 personal transfers closed at 8pm est on friday and opened at monday at 8am.. They told us there was after hours support for handling TOS calls but there wasn’t any Friday night..
I have worked in mobile phone call center activations department and have to say that even when it’s done through a sales rep there are problems so some of it wasn’t itunes’, Apple’s, or AT&T’s fault cause they may have had problems any way they did it.
I have to personally say that through itunes is they way I want to activate a phone, but it’s not revolutionary not to have to go through a sales rep. you can order phones online from any of the major carriers without actually talking to anyone.
Also I wonder how many of the phones where activated under current lines, which is possible and would not have been considered ‘activations’ in the numbers.
anyways, what does it matter if it sells alot, if you want one buy one if you don’t…don’t.