Apple: Over 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold
updated 09:15 am EDT, Mon July 14, 2008
Apple: 1M iPhone 3Gs sold
Over 1 million iPhone 3Gs have already been sold, Apple claims. The figure is based on data from all 21 countries in which the 3G launched on Friday, including countries like the US, Canada, Japan and England. The millionth phone is said to have been sold sometime on Sunday. "iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," reads a PR statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "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."
The officially tally echoes Friday predictions by RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, who successfully guessed the 1 million total. Falling short of the mark were analysts with Piper Jaffray, who -- based on Friday sales at Apple and AT&T stores in New York and Minneapolis -- predicted weekend sales of about 425,000. Of 283 people surveyed, 66 percent were buying the 16GB model, a decrease from the 91 percent who bought the original high-capacity model (8GB) during the 2007 launch. 38 percent of those getting a 3G said they were upgrading from an earlier iPhone.
Based even on its premature estimates, Piper believes that Apple will sell 4.1 million 3Gs by the end of this quarter.
One Million Sold...
07/14, 09:29am reply
...and three actually are activated. :)
Glad it was a success, but the infrastructure failures were a problem. I am eagerly awaiting mine, although the 2.0 update made my old iPhone fun.
dynsight
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2005
Boffo.
07/14, 09:58am reply
Now bring on the new desktops and iPod Touches.
Monstermind
Junior Member
Joined: May 2000
No.
07/14, 10:07am reply
They knew there would be issues with the servers, there just isn't technology to handle that many people. I think it went a little worse than expected, but not a whole lot.
luminousnerd
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Joined: Jul 2008
Country
07/14, 10:21am reply
"including countries like the US, Canada, Japan and England."
I hope they didn't just count England when looking at the UK. The stores in Wales were sold out too.
rcopeh
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Joined: Apr 2008
Re: No
07/14, 10:53am (2 replies) reply
They knew there would be issues with the servers, there just isn't technology to handle that many people. I think it went a little worse than expected, but not a whole lot.
What in the world are you talking about? There isn't technology to handle 1 million people. Man, that's a bummer. Someone better go tell those people at Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, etc. that they are skating on thin ice and better take their servers down now, rather than risk them crashing.
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001
Don't Be Silly, Testudo.
07/14, 11:45am reply
Everyone knows the internet is a series of tubes. Could you make a tube big enough to hold a million people? DIDN'T THINK SO.
PookJP
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
No phones anywhere
07/14, 01:00pm reply
I live in the NY metro area and no one, Apple or AT&T, has iphones and they seem to have no idea when they will.
Nice work Stevie boy!
michaele
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Joined: Apr 2007
Apple commercials for...
07/14, 01:36pm reply
iPhone. Did any of you see any 3G iPhone commercials on TV. I know they have that one, but that's it. It didn't watch much TV over the weekend so I don't know if Apple did much advertising. If they didn't, then the iPhone turnout is amazing. Then the iPhone seems to sell itself without Apple spending a lot of money on advertising costs.
I've recently seen lots of BlackBerry spots on TV. They have two commercials they run over and over. A million handsets in three days (with server problems) is not an easy task even if it was introduced in multiple countries. If people don't want the device, then it doesn't matter how many countries it's offered in.
It's not that servers can't handle a million people, it's handling a million transactions in a few hours that's a problem. Lots of stuff on Google is already cached, whereas the Apple servers were doing new transactions of entering data. Apple is not Amazon, so maybe they do have a lot to learn about setting up servers or setting up enough servers.
Constable Odo
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Joined: Aug 2007
Server meltdown, why?
07/14, 01:51pm reply
Somebody calculated that the number of activations came to 231 a second for hours. That really is a large number. Okay, Amazon and eBay are specially designed to handle constant transactions since it's their bread and butter, but they'd probably only reach a load like that on Christmas Eve. Since the Apple servers only crapped out one time, maybe now they have the problem under control.
Constable Odo
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Joined: Aug 2007
meltdown
07/14, 01:57pm (1 reply) reply
Well, maybe if Apple couldn't handle that, they should have KNOWN that, and, as such, modified their system or their sales accordingly so they wouldn't s**** their loyal customers on launch day. Maybe pre-selling. Or allow orders on-line.
But, no, people had to stand in line and try to activate and stick apple in a big hole because they weren't ready for the service issues.
But, hey, it's apple. We'll just give them a pass on all this.
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001