Steve Jobs yesterday announced that Apple had shipped 3,000,000 iPhone 4s since launch, 22 days prior. That seems like a pretty impressive number. But looking a little deeper might reveal some issues. Apple had announced sales of 1.7 million in the first three days of iPhones sales. That is an insane amount of phones, especially considering that the release was only in five countries.
But that also means that Apple has “only” sold 1.3 million iPhones in the following 19 days of sales, including international launches in Germany, the UK, France and Japan. While Apple is saying there is a three week delay in getting iPhones, a quick check to AT&T this morning (below) shows they have stock. Also, my local Best Buy has them available.
1.3 million iPhones in 19 days is almost 70,000/day. That is a very solid number but not even half of what Android claims to be doing every day.
What happened? Was the original demand so much higher than Apple anticipated that Apple can’t keep up with production? The AT&T/Apple inventory discrepancy clouds that call. Also, shouldn’t Apple be making more iPhones/day than Android activates?
A scary thought, but perhaps the “Antenna-gate” has slowed sales somewhat? Or maybe Apple is tweaking production to help signal strength, but slowing down output?
Or maybe that White iPhone that comes out at the end of the month will get people buying again.
Whatever the case, it will be good to hear what Apple has to say about sales at the earnings call on Tuesday.
“That is an insane amount of phones, especially considering that the release was only in the US.”
Launch was worldwide not only the US.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/iphone-4-launch-day-line-watch/
edit: Thanks Chris, typo edited.
You’re getting stories now by AT&T sales reps? You must really need a story because sales rep usually never know what’s truely going on.
No stocks in Germany… at the moment waiting time is 9 weeks…
Apple are masters and interpreting numbers in ways that make them look as good as they can. Other companies do it to. It’s called marketing.
I take stats like that with a grain of salt regardless of which company they come from.
They do not have any in stock. They are on backorder. Backorders take 10-14 days to come in. Many are still waiting for orders place 7/8 and later.
They are like rocking horse shit on O2 in the UK. They can’t sell units they haven’t got.
Another non-story. Getting to be a bit of a habit around here.
Although the official sales window at first is counted as three days, my iPhone 4 arrived a day early, as did numerous cargo plane loads of them all over the country.
This alters the stats a tad. All the pre-orders arrived in that first weekend, with no accounting as to when orders were placed, how many days before launch, etc. The moment of purchase was not 1.7 million phones in three days. The moments of purchase decisions were spread out over months prior to the pre-order site going live. And look what happened when that became active.
The real test will be, as always, culled from long-run stats, not instant or short-term numbers.
Those stats are confusing.
It only took a couple of hours before the date was pushed back to July 2nd for shipment so your wrong there. Also we don’t know if 1.7 Mil were SOLD or SHIPPED. Those are 2 different things.
Interesting story. Good perspective. Does make you wonder. I can attest to affecting sales. I’ve personally over heard several people at Verizon and Sprint stores buying Droids because of the reception issue. I was only there a few minutes looking at phones.
As for the 1.7-in-3-days/1.3-in-19-days, you must remember that the 3 (4 as the commenter) days were really “delivered” iPhones pre-ordered.
Remember the likes of “600,000 in 8 hours” (or something like this).
And, of course, there are the white-waiters and all the antenna scaryness.
As a last point, remember also that in the last 3 months they also sold 3 millions of who-knows-for-what-it-is-wworthwhile iPad!
Of course, page-view-seekers’ bloggers and sites will write articles like this.
I don’t understand why people keep comparing Android sales (an OS) with iPhone sales (a single model of a phone). It’s not comparing similar things at all. It would be like saying that there are more Windows 7 computer sold than iMacs. It’s not apples to apples (pardon the pun). A more accurate comparison would be comparing Android DEVICE sales with iOS DEVICE sales, OR compare iPhone 4 sales with a SINGLE Android phone sales.
If you factor in iPads, iPod Touches and iPhone 3GSs, you’ll probably get an activation rate similar to Android’s. However, even if you don’t, people should expect more Android devices to be activated because there simply are more options out there for people.
I don’t know which lucky AT&T store has the iPhone 4, but last week I went to the local AT&T store and sales told me that they haven’t even got their first shipment of iPhone yet.