Monday, September 17, 2012

Initial iPhone 5 Sales Tepid? (Short Take)

Apple Inc. new headquarters
Apple Inc. new headquarters (Photo credit: MarkGregory007)
Keeping with my tradition of being late to the show here are a couple of thoughts about Apple's recently announced iPhone 5Before I begin though I'm going to post a disclaimer. I've only ever been a fan boy of one company and that was Commodore. They died a long time ago and watching their rise and fall along with the downfall of the Amiga cured me forever of the need to blindly support any company or product. I'm not going claim I'm totally objective. I'm human and its folly to claim I'm without bias. Keep all that in mind when reading the following.

I own all sorts of Apple products. I'll likely own more in the future. Over the past few years I've often written in praise of both Apple and their offerings. Those endorsements and purchases were based on my perception that Apple had the best product for a particular need or desire I had at the time.

On that note, the recent announcement by Apple that the iPhone 5 was exceeding all their expectations feels a little odd. Two million units shipped in the first day is great but last year they sold more than four million iPhone 4s handsets in the first three days.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/17iPhone-4S-First-Weekend-Sales-Top-Four-Million.html

 That launch encompassed seven countries

Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Japan
United States
United Kingdom

While the iPhone 5 was launched in two additional locations

Hong Kong &
Singapore

Those two additional locations make an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison difficult as do the differing time periods but its difficult for me to see two million units sold in 24 hours in nine markets as being significantly better than more than four million being sold in 72 hours in seven countries since the sales distribution is likely to be biased towards the earlier part of the initial availability window.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that iPhone 5 sales are going to exceed iPhone 4s sales but only modestly when put in context. If I'm right Apple may just be in a little trouble here.
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1 comment:

  1. It appears I'm not comparing like to like here. The numbers quoted in the old press release include both pre order and launch while the 2 million number being quoted in the press currently includes only pre orders.

    http://images.macrumors.com/article-new/2012/09/iphone_launch_weekend_sales_comparison.jpg

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