Apple sells 270,000 iPhones in first 2 days

Apple probably "has" sales of X, but for the first two days of sales, Apple "had" sales of 270,000.

First, everyone was saying 500 to 700 thousand sales. As soon as AT&T announces 146,000 activations, the 500-700 thousand become 270 thousand.

So, how much do YOU believe that 130,000 iPhones sat idle until the next week? That folks shelling out 536 or 636 bucks (oh wait, the 36 comes in when you activate it) sat staring at the packaging until the following week when they may have gotten around to activation? I think not.

If you read the fine print it says that number (270k) “consists of iPhones and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.”

I'm not sure who wrote the statement "well short of expectations" for the first 270,000 in the first two days. We have never seen any expectations for just Friday (after 6PM) and Saturday. All expectation figures (including the imaginary 'whisper' number of one million) were for the whole weekend, including Sunday.

In fiscal quarter 3 (ending in June), Apple only had about 20 business hours of iPhone sales (and that's a liberal estimate, since it assumes Fri 6-midnight, Sat 8AM-10PM). In that first weekend, there were 14 more working hours.

The following was cut off from my previous post:

If the pace of those sales continued on Sunday at the same rate it did on Fri and Sat, that would extrapolate the above figure to about 460,000, which is more-or-less in line or better than Gartner's, Pipper Jaffray's, and others' estimates.

Expecting to sell one million by the end of next quarter is extremely conservative, to put it mildly. Some two weeks ago, an unnamed source from the AT&T sales force was quoted stating that AT&T had already activated over million iPhones after first two weeks of sale.

I'm expecting AAPL shares to hit $150 tomorrow... :)

Guys, I hate to tell you that Oppenheimer (Apple's CFO) has said that Apple sold 270, 000 phones in the first day and a half. I doubt he is lying. If he is, he is going to jail.

...to Tiger & the new Mini & iMac - let's hope ! ...and perhaps that 42" monitor I've been dreaming of, he he...? ;-)

There is a possibility that the number only includes Friday sales. Since Saturday (30 June) was a weekend, not a business day for offices, it is entirely possible that Saturday numbers were not even included (although this is quite a stretch).

Either way; the 130,000 phones that were bought but not activated on Friday/Saturday got activated on Sunday, when they were presented (as gifts) to the intended recipients. While there was a number of those who couldn't activate until Sunday, Monday, even Tuesday (about 10,000), almost everyone standing in line on Friday an Saturday bought two phones. One was activated very quickly; the second, not necessarily.

To be fair, some of those silly analysts did suggest Apple sold $500, 000 in the first two days. Munster was one. All those people are silly though, as no product at the iPhone's price range has sold even 200, 000 units in that time frame. In other words, even if the AT&T figure was correct, Apple broke records.

For those not following the After-Hours trading, after closing at around $137, then sinking immediately to $133, AAPL is now around $145 (back in the nose-bleed territory).

People are digesting the numbers and making the right conclusions.