One Million iPhone 3Gs in First Weekend; Is That Good or Bad?
This morning Apple press released the fact that the one millionth iPhone 3G was sold on Sunday. One million, hmm. This is a pretty big number indeed and it certainly is quite an amazing feat. If we stop to think for a moment, was this really an accomplishment that Apple should be bragging about? According to Apple dictator Steve Jobs, it took 74 days to sell the first million units when the gen1 iPhone was released so clearly the iPhone 3G is selling faster. About a year ago however, Apple and AT&T combined to push a reported 700,000 first generation iPhones during its premier weekend. Oh by the way, the original iPhone was launched in the US only. Also if you recall, last year the iPhone was released at 6:00 pm as opposed to the iPhone 3G which was made available at 8:00 am this past Friday. Let’s look at the reported numbers side by side:
- 2007: iPhone launches Friday evening in the US only, sells around 700,000 units by COB Sunday
- 2008: iPhone 3G launches Friday morning in 21 countries, sells 1,000,000 units by COB Sunday
So basically Apple launched the iPhone 3G in 20 additional countries this time around, added about 12 daytime hours to their ‘opening weekend’ and saw a total approximate sales boost of only around 43%. Hmm. Some might say that’s not so great. No, it’s not an “epic fail” but these numbers are nowhere near impressive when compared to last year considering the hype and additional global availability of the iPhone 3G. Clearly activation difficulties made a huge dent in this weekend’s sales and we wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers are well below Apple’s internal projections.
UPDATE: Sorry, fellas. We had wrong numbers for the 2007 launch. Apple sold around 250,000 units in the launch weekend last year.
No. they only sold 250k the first weekend in 07. They didn’t sell 1 million till September.
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Oh Apple. The charlatans of technology!
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It blows. They’re no phones anywhere. Not at AT&T or Apple stores near me. Jobs really blew this one.
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The number actually sold could be and probably is well over 1 million, last year’s number could be more exact.
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I don’t know what backwater you’re living in ‘genius’ but where it counts…New York, the hysteria to buy the things resulted in most people deciding they could wait a day or a week for the lines to disperse before buying four (in my case). It’s all well and good to be a contrarian, but you should stop doing the math and look at the reality.
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razr part 2, here we come
every man, women and dog will have one
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What blows is that ATT is saying they have the fastest 3g network out of the three. But what they are not saying is that they network cant hold that type of capacity. I work for best buy mobile. Ever since the new iphone launch our att demo aircard has been running on average at 100kbs while our verizon card was averaging 900kbs and thats in Houston Tx. And coverage is another issue. ATT next time do your homework a fast 3g network does nothing if it cant handle heavy traffic, build up the network before you release the phone.
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I think more people did not want to wait in line this year. Most have seen that there is no need to do so, atleast thats my opinion.
the numbers will be much larger in the coming days & weeks.
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u think like a japanese: reporting the number of satisfied customers served. i bet the bean counters at apple are grinning over the bump for their 3Q numbers
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If what people are saying is true, why call it
3G and do a lame ass demo June 9th and brag about speed when ATT clearly doesnt seem ready to handle that many units acivated on their
“3G” Network. Way to go ATT and EL JOBO! How about giving us MMS and a more than 2MP camera
JOBO?
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get your number right, Apple sold around 250,000 original iphones on first weekend. iPhone 3G is almost four times that number. so how impressive the number are now. Last time when Apple started selling iPhone it had potential market of around 6-8 million smartphone buyer with AT&T. this time they have 25-30 million potential smartphone buyer and reaching more than 4-5% of potential buyer in first 72 hours is impressive by any measure.
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Yeah, way to drop the ball again Boy Genius. Providing all these fancy “numbers” with no tie in to the “human condition”, no accounting for say heavy subway traffic or construction in other areas of the country. Maybe I was just having a bad day and wanted to get in a good cry. Maybe that why I didn’t get an iPhone this weekend, did you think of that? You didn’t, did you? Pfft. Whatever dawg.
Next time you want to put together a bunch of fancy “numbers” to “calculate” something, be a little less smug you jerk.
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your an idiot
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BG-I was in line at local ATT store and they sold out by the time the doors opened. Myself and many others were allowed to ‘prepay’ pn the basis that we might have ours by this Weds. I feel you are being a bit overly negative.
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@ Zach -
c’mon Zach - they move 1 million units in a weekend and the best you can say is “its not an epic fail”?
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Yeah, HOW MANY of those “1 million” were actual devices activated and in a customer’s hands? Reports from all over are that stores were selling out of their daily allotment but still offering to “sell” you a iPhone (without actually giving it to you) seem to me a plan put in place way ahead of time by APPL and ATT to “pump the numbers” for launch weekend.
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You also have to consider that the entire European allotment and the AT&T stores sold out on Friday morning, and the fact that there are still lines at Apple Stores today. You also have to consider that not every person that bought one last year will buy this year. it’s not just that 1 million phones were sold. it’s that they sold 500-700K the first weekend last year, and then 1 million this year, despite the fact that each phone is locked, stock shortages in Europe, and activation issues. The bottom line here though is simple: even allowing for potential returns, there are nearly a million fewer potential RIM, Palm and Instinct customers as of this morning, and as I stated earlier, there are still lines today.
It’s interesting though. . .the Thunder will be lucky to sell a million units this year. Oh wait, that’s right, that product hasn’t even been announced yet. Hmmm. . .
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I think BGR’s main point was that Apple did not do a great job distributing the device. It should have sold more, and would have if stores were given more supplies. And the itunes crash was a disaster as well. The iPhone would’ve had a much better weekend turnout had these issues not existed.
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A lot of the AT&T stores only got 40 phones! I waited in line and had to do a fulfillment order and prepay for the phone and have it shipped.
Also to reply to some of the less than informed comments - AT&T’s 3G network didn’t crash. The Apple iTunes Activation servers crashed and AT&T’s internal ordering system suffered a few crashes that day. Neither have anything to do with AT&T’s wireless network. Get a fucking clue.
Furthermore - 250,000 or 700,000 (whatever the number) for a SINGLE country compared to 21 countries with 12 more hours to only sell 1,000,000 isn’t actually that great. Even if you count all of Europe as one country (compared to the USA, in terms of middle income buyers), and lump a few of the other small countries together - you still get a 5x increase in terms of the number of people capable of buying one. Then add in the fact that it’s half the price of the previous phone which adds more people who can afford to purchase the phone.
As far as AT&T’s 3G network getting slower: Lets say out of all the people that bought and were able to activate the iPhone 3G that have access to an AT&T 3G network is 300,000. Where the actual number is a hell of a lot less, it’s still paramount to throwing an ice cube into the fucking Atlantic Ocean. Not much of an effect. You sir, work at Best Buy Mobile for a very obvious reason.
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as a mac fan, I’ll all for going negative on the iphone — jealousy — but I don’t think the numbers here justify the hate. Yes, first weekend sales could be larger given the geographic spread and supply difficulties, but any phone company would kill for a million sales of a high end handset over a weekend.
The real number to look at is when does the iphone stop being “cool”. 20% of the market? 30% 80%
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1 million units in a weekend alone is a pretty good # specially if everyone was required to sign a new contract, am pretty sure they could have sold more but hey it’s not like they have stock sitting on shelfs, they’re sold out all over in my area so i don’t see how could they sold more if they’re out of stock
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heh fox news is reporing this as the i flop or sour apple wit bugs in the firmware 1 million in 3 days compared to nokias ratio withis over 1.5 million units a day
so yeah this is a flop
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@Lil Whoa:
From what I gathered the iTunes server crash was actually an unrelated problem that was exacerbated by the load. Besides, take a look at the Mozilla launch. Lets put this in more obvious terms: You have water service that comes to your house is a steady 24GPM @ 80psi. Then one day a rush of 3,000 GPM at 250psi comes crashing in. Yeah, your water lines will explode and your hot water heater will rocket out of your house and land in your neighbors pool.
It’s kind of hard to “test” that kind of load making launches of this kind very unpredictable.
As far as AT&T’s crashes. Let’s just say when you split and merge and split and merge as a company - your IT network becomes a cesspool of outdated and incompatible nodes. AT&T’s internal ordering network isn’t really up to snuff as it may crash during a NORMAL busy day (iAnything release notwithstanding).
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Nokia doesn’t sell 1.5 million phones a day!!! They give out 1.5 million phones for free a day which is a hell of a lot different, when was the last time they sold anything no one pays for Nokia
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There is one very big factor here that everyone is missing… when the original iphone was released and sold 250k the first weekend it did not require activation at point of purchase. Apple them selve admitted thousands of those original iphone were only purchased to sell on ebay or hacked and sent abroad.
In contrast, the iphone 3g requires activation at purchase, I have news for all of you, the money is not in the phone, it’s in the 2year contract! Which means, worldwide, apple just got paid on 1 MILLION activations over 1 weekend! Holy balls! thats alot of money!
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