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.
Your just jealous because Best Buy Mobile was not selling the iPhone on launch weekend and those long lines where not at your store. I read the AT&T press release on “the fastest 3G Network” and that info is all based on 3rd party testing. AT&T is just advertising what other people are saying, and you cant blame them. I personally have an AT&T air card in a 3G market and average 1.4-1.8 on the download and about 800-900 on the upload.
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Ok, they sold 4 times the phones vs opening weekend last year, but opened in about 20 times the countries vs last year. Doesn’t sound like a good ratio.
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RE: Steve Jobs announcement today: “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”
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To: Boy Genius
Your analysis is seriously flawed.
The most important metric is the number of days to reach 1 million iPhone sales. This negates the effects of what time of day the launch begins (8 am or 8 pm), whether people are working or off from work, weather conditions, home activation or in-store activation, iTunes working or NOT working, etc.
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i would like to see how many they sold this weekend in the US and then we can compare. US launch vs. World Launch….how can you compare?
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keymaker:
Nokia do sell 1.5m phones a day. Operators “give away” the phones.
Just ’cause the consumer is not paying does not mean Nokia is not selling the phones.
BTW, Nokia sells the best part of half a billion handsets a year. That makes them comfortably the biggest cell phone company in the world.
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i honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with the actual 3g network. everyone saying the iphone’s 3g service is slow and/or lagging, but i’ve been using my htc 8525 all weekend like normal and had 4-5 bars and super fast results. if the at&t’s 3g network were bogged down with over usage wouldn’t that affect me as well?
not logically no.
just a thought.
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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.”
Bingo. Distribution was and is horrendous. I’m not going to stand in line for 2+ hours for a phone, and then they sold out too quickly. Just within my close friends and family I know of 5 people that are going to buy the phone but are waiting for the lines to disappear.
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sooooo anyway.. where is the bold.
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they sold 250k iphones in the first weekend last year, not 700k
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@Jman since you want to say what 3rd partys say. Go take a look at the latest post by engadgetmobile. ATT also sayed at one point they had the fewest drop calls. What happend to that advertisment, they had to take it down because it was not all true. And why would i be jealous that we didnt sell it. Im actually happy because how all the systems was down that sounds like a headache. I get paid which ever way it goes.
@ Marty Mar: If we are not in the same location then no you wouldnt be affected, thats why i put Houston Tx. Over here in houston everyone is reporting slower speeds. Nothing against ATT its just their 3g network dont compare to EVDO speed is nothing without coverage. EVDO handles more traffic with less frustration. And thats coming from basic Electronics Engineering.
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@keymaker,
If Nokia would give away 1.5 mil. Phones a day they wouldn’t be in biz anymore.
The Telco’s give them away on 2-3 year terms.
Buy a phone o contract and you will see how much they are.
1 mil. phones is not a lot considering it went on sale in 21 cointries around the world.
They hope to sell 10 mil. till the end of the year, Nokia sells 6 mil. a week.
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@cobald75, Dude all Nokia phones are subsidy by carriers, just go to any carrier site and you will see Nokia phones are given free to customers, Am sure that if my local AT&T & apple store had anymore stock they would still be selling, but they can’t sell more than what they have. Am sure if AT&T starts giving iphones for free, they will be in the same spot Nokia is worlwide
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yeah appls marketing mechaine is only effective in the states my frind in germany says they barly sell any at all as far as mobis go> evn when they sell unlocked you go over to the uk for exampla few ears ago the nokia N95 is a standerd phone over at tmo.uk
one of the reason we don’t see the good stuff over here is the US has a ban on mobile devices sporting qualcom chipsets also mos amricans arn’t will ing tp pay the price for an unlocked device
also overseas GSM is more common they don’t have to worry about cdma as much only exceptions being china an north koreah which has a WCDMA network for it’s goverment VIP’s
an japan use umts
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@keymaker,
you are right they are subsidized by the carrier not by Nokia. You said Nokia gives them away.
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@keymaker
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Anyone have the numbers for other cellphones that sold a million over the opening weekend?
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Everyone throws numbers around talking about how Nokia sells millions of phones a day, but the vast majority of their handsets are low-end workhorse devices that are given away to end-users, not any sort of premium device. Smartphones like the n95 make up a slim minority of their sales.
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It was 270k the first weekend, not 700k. If you are going to do the analysis, at least get the facts right!
Also, 1M units at about $450 each, including the carrier subsidy, makes this the biggest CE launch ever, at about $450M in sales. I guess that’s “bad”, not.
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ya, this is a great time for RIM to start pushing out more info about the Bold… like a $189 price.
I love apple, own two notebooks of theirs, but i still prefer my Curve.
cmon RIM, give us a Bold price!!
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You need to compare Apples vs. Apples (Pun intended). The Apple(heh) iPhone is a multifunctional personal computing platform. The amount of people that previous the debut of the iPhone was quite low. Most people were thought geeks or a no-life business person when spotted with a “Smart-Phone.” However, Pre-iPhone *most* (NOT ALL) “Smart-Phones” had little or no media features and if they did, they were an afterthought and had little development or thought put into it.
Apple set out to change that and they did. Now, I’m not saying they “invented” the smart-phone or even the average Joe entertainment-oriented smart-phone. What they did do, is bring a level of refinement and made it able to evolve by creating a truly coherent platform that shares a lot with its Desktop/Laptop based cousin to smear the line between personal computer and smart-phone. Sure, you can gripe all day about its flaws and you can bring up every other phone that had its features long before it came or that has features it doesn’t. But all that does is show how narrow minded and stubborn you are.
Sure, the Copy & Paste and the MMS or probably more of Steve J going - “Why the F do we need MMS, people SHOULD be using E-mail because E-mail is more powerful” As far as copy and paste, there either has to be some sort of issue that doesn’t allow it on the platform or Steve doesn’t think we need it. It would be useful and there have been a few times where it would have been beneficiary to have, but whatever. My biggest “WTF” is the lack of MMS and video. And the camera is a little blah.
Some sacrifices needed to be made to enable its form. It’s THIN (FINALLY). If it had all the best features we wanted right now, it would be the size of the Palm Treo 650.
I’m sure the iPhone V3 or V4 will have video and all that. You have to remember, this is the SECOND hardware revision. NUMBER 2! Give them time and the phone will grow as the technology becomes available.
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LMFAO @MadMike - I’m sure the iPhone V3 or V4 will have video and all that. You have to remember, this is the SECOND hardware revision. NUMBER 2! Give them time and the phone will grow as the technology becomes available.
You know what? That sounds REALLY familiar. Oh yeah, that’s what all the fanboys said when the original iPhone came out lacking common features. ‘Just wait till v2…..’.
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um bgr… they sold 250,000 the first weekend. remember that was the estimate (700,000) and then the stock prices went way down when they found out it was only 250,000.
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here a link proving what i said
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/07/25/apple_sells_270000_iphones_in_the_first_two_days.html
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Yawn… the only people who should care how many Iphones sold the first day, week month and year are the apple share holders. Oh, and of course anyone who bought the last version, the current version and the soon to be released (in apple fashion) next version… as early, likely, as next week for half the price with twice the memory …blah blah blah.
Truth is this is simple economics, supply and demand…keep supply limited and keep the demand high. In this case, it is all a false economy as apple can produce as many phones as the demand would require, but more importantly they only produce what the network can or in this case and can’t handle.
If apple really wanted to sell more phones they should not have it with one provider, dosen’t matter what provider you are with, I don’t care which it is because after reading the posts everyone thinks their network is the best and hate all the others. Customer service is a thing of the past, so don’t get on your high horse about one being better than the other…they all suck. Here is a clue for all you fanboys…go buy the phone you like, on the network you like, and call someone who cares…with your free mobile to mobile, in circle, free nights and weekends etc. Can you hear me now? Nobody cares about your opinion about anything… let alone why the Iphone is better than the instinct vs. the Thunder.
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The b1tching and moaning of iPhone Fan(atic)s -> Priceless!!!
Thank you BGR. You’ve certainly made my day.
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