The iPhone was released two days before the end of the fiscal quarter and weeks later Apple and AT&T are panicking. First of all, the iPhone didn’t sell nearly as well as many predicted it would. Most analysts predicted anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 iPhones to be sold in the first few days of availability with some sure that up to 700,000 would be sold.
With such pomp and circumstance surrounding the release, it’s no wonder that the real numbers were a bit disappointing. Apple announced yesterday in its fiscal third-quarter earnings report that 270,000 iPhones were sold in the last 30 hours of the quarter. While still impressive, the number falls short of many predictions.
The real headscratcher comes when AT&T reported that they activated only 146,000 iPhones during the same period. So the question becomes, “Where did those 124,000 iPhones go?” Both Apple and AT&T reported that a small percentage of iPhone users had trouble activating their accounts, but the percentage was in the single digits.
An AT&T spokesman gave several reasons for the discrepancy, but most of them don’t hold water.While some of those who bought iPhones may have waited a day or two to activate them after waiting in line for hours to purchase them it certainly wouldn’t be a huge number. Another explanation given was that the discrepancy was due to people buying iPhones to sell on eBay or CraigsList.
Ok, so maybe 124,000 people had activation problems, procrastination problems, and problems re-selling the things. The real point is that it really isn’t that big a deal. It was almost certain that the iPhone wouldn’t live up to sales hype in the first thirty hours it was available, but that doesn’t stop some from freaking out.
Both Apple’s and AT&T’s stock fell after the third-quarter reports were delivered. Despite that fact that Apple’s net profit has risen over 50% compared to the same time last year and that quarterly sales of the Mac were the highest EVER, there were panicky doomsayers dropping their stock.
The point is that even though iPhone’s sales weren’t as high as predicted it still kicked major selling butt. For an interesting comparison of iPhone’s early sales to that of its sibling the iPod check out this article by Arik Hesseldahl of Business Week.