PC World asks Where Are Apple's Missing iPhones?. "Analysts are mulling over Apple's iPhone sales numbers and are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures. Apple claims slightly over 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007 -- yet AT&T this week revealed it ended the year with 'just at or sightly under two million iPhone customers'." Estimates are of 3-400,000 sold in Europe which still leaves 1.3 million unaccounted for. Could 35% of all iPhones be unlocked?
More at Computerworld. "The only way Apple could possibly feel “confident” of reaching 10 million units by the end of 2008 is if the company were to sell more iPhones during next year’s holiday season than they did during this year’s. And the only way to do that is to sell to existing users. And the only way to do that is to come out with a new iPhone."
Now I'm interested in a new 3G iPhone but I fail to follow the math. I don't really think Apple sold iPhone's to more than half the market last Christmas.
2 comments:
Remember that they've restricted their US market to AT&T customers, and it's further restricted to the "high end phone" customer, people who just want to talk on the phone don't want to spend crazy prices, they want the "free phone" which is a huge part of US mobile phone providers' sales. I'm sure there are lots of people who'd consider iPhones still, and you'll probably see lots of iPhones bought with what people perceive as "free money" (their tax refunds) and of course the tax rebate boondoggle money.
That said, there are other shiny new phones that, while not quite iPhone super slick, have lots of the gee whiz features and are available on the networks to which people are already tied by contracts from the free phone they're talking on now...
There are also people waiting for their current contract to run out before getting a new phone. Many of those are 2 year contracts so they will continue to come due and more people will enter the market.
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