Only 146,000 iPhone activations Opening Weekend

[ddubbo]

That number is absurdly low. Apple sold essentially every phone it had, and there's no way they had so few ready to go.

Yesterday I sold off half my AAPL position just to be conservative going into the earnings call, but now this morning I am putting it all back on at a discount.

This phone is so profitable, and they will sell so many, that AAPL will reach 200 before the end of the year.

Sell now, buy on November. It always goes down august,september, and begins to climb somewhere before January' MacWorld

 

[Frisco]

This proves that almost no one except Mac freaks and geeks with extra money will buy this beauty, but expensive and limited device. I suppose no more than 1 000 000 will be sold witin Q4, no more 5000000 untill June 29 2008. The hype is over.

It does appear that the iPhone is going to a major flop. Apple's greed for not going with Verizon and 3G is going to cost them big. Yeah Apple got a percentage of the monthly bill with At&t, but this decision is going to cost Apple billions.

That's what happens when you get greedy folks!!

 

[gnasher729]

Correct me if I'm wrong. But weren't there major issues with the activiation server that first weekend?

That number is lower than I expected, but for two days that ain't shabby.

It is not lower than expected if you start thinking about it.

Lets say Saturday at 4pm you bought two iPhones, one for yourself and one for your girlfriend. You meet her at 6pm, and by the time she has finished saying "thank you", it's much too late to activate the iPhone on the Saturday, when it would count for AT&T's numbers.

 

[shawnce]

This proves that almost no one except Mac freaks and geeks with extra money will buy this beauty, but expensive and limited device. I suppose no more than 1 000 000 will be sold witin Q4, no more 5000000 untill June 29 2008. The hype is over.

Lets see what 25th brings shall we?

 

[bdj21ya]

First off ALL iPhones are activated through iTunes.Regardless of where they were purchased.

I'm guessing the figure of 146,000 activations means AT&T REALLY dropped the ball trying to activate the phone.
There may have been only 146,000 activations but the number of phones sold is probably much higher.I'm guessing a good 40-70% of purchasers wern't able to activate their phone until late Sunday or Monday.Remember if a person tried to activate late in the evening and couldn't the AT&T support was closed after 9PM.
The only thing this really shows me is how screwed up the first two days of activations were.

I'm sorry to say that your theory has already been debunked. There was only a small percentage with problems activating. The rest of the phones sold would have to come from people who bought but then waited for activation (either because they thought they could make a profit reselling, or were giving it as a gift, or were hoping to hack around activation).

 

[aaarrrgggh]

Wow... lower than I figured...

...but a reasonable number none the less. It would sound like an average of 40 iPhones per AT&T store plus 400 per Apple store. I kind of expected 70 per AT&T store and 900 per Apple store on Friday plus 500 per Apple store on Saturday. Guess my Apple store wasn't representative of the average, although it is far from a flagship location.

I think any upside potential to the first two days is limited to 10%, factoring in activation problems, gifts, hackers, etc.

 

[mrowl]

It does appear that the iPhone is going to a major flop. Apple's greed for not going with Verizon and 3G is going to cost them big. Yeah Apple got a percentage of the monthly bill with At&t, but this decision is going to cost Apple billions.

That's what happens when you get greedy folks!!

yeah, its a massive flop. HUGE, its going to get Steve fired...


3G SUCKS. IT HAS WIFI!

 

[CybrMike]

Buy PUTS today. Its going to get hammered tomorrow.

 

[michelle21]

This proves that almost no one except Mac freaks and geeks with extra money will buy this beauty, but expensive and limited device. I suppose no more than 1 000 000 will be sold witin Q4, no more 5000000 untill June 29 2008. The hype is over.

Well I'm probably not the best barometer, but although I brought mine on the second day, I waited a few days to activate it.

You are making assumptions based on activations, which include a lot of factors, if it was only 146,000 sold, (sorry 147,000 sold) than why were they so hard to find the next day, Did apple mislead on inventory too.

More likely the mac geeks activated immediately, the rest of us who have a life (sometimes) waited until we had the time to put up with the activation mess we were reading about all that friday.

AAPL is down today, because of some concerns by a single anayst that does not seem to have any bearing on actual sales of anything.

 

[KREX725]

This proves that almost no one except Mac freaks and geeks with extra money will buy this beauty, but expensive and limited device. I suppose no more than 1 000 000 will be sold witin Q4, no more 5000000 untill June 29 2008. The hype is over.

I don't know if I'd go that far. I still see daily news items on the iPhone on the TV networks and in print, so Apple is still reaping some free advertising/hype progression for it. Obviously nothing now will match the pre-launch hype, but to say it's completely over may be a bit too simplified.

 

[guzhogi]

I can see three reasons why it's so much lower than expectations:
1. Quite a few people had problems activating it
2. They may have bought the iPhone on Friday/Saturday, but didn't activate it until later (either they bought it online or waited a while)
3. Many people put their iPhone up on eBay

For the last 2, people wouldn't have gotten an iPhone until after the cutoff. I'd be interested in seeing the # of activations this quarter.

 

[shawnce]

Buy PUTS today. Its going to get hammered tomorrow.

Ah stock advice on MacRumors.. calling my broker now

 

[Lob]

The only reason it's "not good" is because everyone had bought into the ridiculous hype on the numbers sold. Now that ATT has spilled the beans, maybe Apple will be forthcoming with numbers on their earning conference call tomorrow.

I heard from a number of people that it took over 18 hours for thier iPhone to register and that is the better part of 1 day. I bet the numbers will be huge for iPhone sales. AT&T didn't spill the beans, they dropped the ball!

 

[Peace]

I'm sorry to say that your theory has already been debunked. There was only a small percentage with problems activating. The rest of the phones sold would have to come from people who bought but then waited for activation (either because they thought they could make a profit reselling, or were giving it as a gift, or were hoping to hack around activation).

Debunked by whom? AT&T? The company that reported the number of activations but didn't report the number of iPhones sold? Or analysts ? or you?

 

[mashoutposse]

I would think that they're counting the initial activation requests, not when they actually got done.

The initial guesses at 500,000 sold over the weekend just never made sense. Figure 160 Apple stores. Even if each had 80 units a day (and many didn't), that's still only ~13,000 sales each day for them. Ditto for the 1600 AT&T stores, who probably only had 40 units each, for 64,000 sold a day.

So that would be 26,000 + 128,000 = 154,000 if all had max number of units. Much more in line with what was available for sale and activation.

I suspect that it'll also be revealed that 10-15% were returned within the grace period. Volume issues, poor cell coverage, and buyer remorse (kids who spent their allowance) will be the main reasons.

Still, not a bad sales amount by any count.

In any case, it just proves that most Wall Street analysts are not to be believed. They're in it to make money, and loved having Apple stock soar at first.

Apple Store on 5th Avenue had around 5000 units on day one. The reports suggest that many of the stores had hundreds available for launch.

 

[defeated]

"many people put iphone on ebay?"

goto ebay and do a search, see how many new iphone there.

 

[kdarling]

You are making assumptions based on activations, which include a lot of factors, if it was only 146,000 sold, (sorry 147,000 sold) than why were they so hard to find the next day, Did apple mislead on inventory too.

No, it's just simple math. There were ~1760 stores selling it those two days. To have sold 500,000 units, each store would've had to sell about 140 units a day. Yet we all know from actual visits and the news, that most had only 40-80 units a day... if even that, since many were "sold out" the first day.

 

[zap2]

Now make it 146,001 because I bought one on launch, didn't acivate it until 5th of July.




But yes, those numbers are low. But hey, it a 500/600 phone...how many can Apple expect to sell in two days?

 

[aristobrat]

The initial guesses at 500,000 sold over the weekend just never made sense. Figure 160 Apple stores. Even if each had 80 units a day (and many didn't), that's still only ~13,000 sales each day for them.

Your Apple store unit count doesn't seem correct.

At the Apple store I waited at (MacArthur Center), I was around #150 in line, which was about the mid-line point.

That store didn't run out of iPhones until late Sunday, which meant they had enough on hand to handle the initial line (which I'd guess at around 300 people, some -- like me -- buying two), everyone who came in after the line died until they closed Friday at midnight, all day Saturday, and almost until close on Sunday.

You're saying they they could have only sold 80 + 80 + 80 units total over the weekend?. I can tell you for a fact that this store sold that many before 8PM on Friday.

 

[Peace]

No, it's just simple math. There were ~1760 stores selling it those two days. To have sold 500,000 units, each store would've had to sell about 140 units a day. Yet we all know from actual visits and the news, that most had only 40-80 units a day... if even that, since many were "sold out" the first day.

That's simply not true.The AT&T store I went to on the first day had a lot more than 40-80 because I was #60 in line and there were a lot more behind me.This store wasn't a large store so I'm guessing they had at least 200 iPhones.

It sold out the first day but had another shipment coming in the next day.

 

[kdarling]

Apple Store on 5th Avenue had around 5000 units on day one. The reports suggest that many of the stores had hundreds available for launch.

I think that it and its west coast equivalent would be the exception, if so. News accounts say many stores counted off 40-80 people in line and that was that. With no inventory the next day, either.

Also, I don't know where the idea that Apple had 1 million ready to go, came from. The best original estimates from non-fanboys were that there were 300K ready, with about half kept in reserve to ship to needy stores. So I can believe that 300K were sold in the first week, perhaps.

It might be too bad that they didn't have more phones in stores, and actually let people buy more than one at a time. Think of all the "eBay" resalers they could've gotten

 

[shawnce]

Apple Store on 5th Avenue had around 5000 units on day one. The reports suggest that many of the stores had hundreds available for launch.

AT&T stores in my area had stock in the 30s and I know the Apple stores south of me had easily in the hundreds (on the first night).

The interesting thing is that at the AT&T stores in my area folks lined up for the iPhone numbers in the 70s to 90s over double to triple the number of phones available. Many of those folks that couldn't get a phone signed up for AT&T to ship them a phone sometime in the future (likely sometime the following week).

Also a couple of folks at work are just now getting shipment notifications for the phones they ordered around a week after release (once they played with the one I got on Sat.).

Anyway as a guess I would say the unit demand during that time period could easily be twice (if not more) then the number activations reported by AT&T and close to twice the unit supply available at the time (at least in my market area).

 

[shk718]

i wonder how many people on this site own an iPhone? is there a way to determine?

also the stock has recoverd a bit - it was down $6 at one point - now its down just under 4.

i also wonder why ATT didn't release the number of phones they sold in their stores.

 

[ddubbo]

I don't know if I'd go that far. I still see daily news items on the iPhone on the TV networks and in print, so Apple is still reaping some free advertising/hype progression for it. Obviously nothing now will match the pre-launch hype, but to say it's completely over may be a bit too simplified.

Of course there'll be a lot of iPhone related hype next weeks, but it'll be not so good for Apple, at last. I predict a lot of stories about that Mac not so really cool , and Vista not so bad, and iPhone is too expensive and limited, and reality deviates from mr Jobs imagination, etc.

 

[guzhogi]

"many people put iphone on ebay?"

goto ebay and do a search, see how many new iphone there.

Not much now, but that Sunday/Monday, there were loads! One guy even put his up for $21,000,000, but he also said that it was b/c he wanted more hits on his.

And always rember, # of activations != (does not equal) the total # iPhones sold