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Math on iPhones Just Doesn't Add Up?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bad-math dept.

Tech Dirt is reporting that recently announced numbers by Apple and AT&T suggest that there is a large gap (1.7 million) between the number of iPhones being sold and those being activated. Taking into account factors like the iPhone launching outside the US and a 20% estimate of people buying the iPhone just for the purposes of unlocking, there are still 700,000 iPhones unaccounted for. "[...] suggesting that they're sitting on store shelves, piling up as unsold inventory. That number suggests at least some gap between perceived demand and actual demand -- while also raising questions about how much effort it will take to eat through that inventory."

7 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. i know! by vanDrunen · · Score: 5, Funny

    They all got blended:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

    1. Re:i know! by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Apple fanboys don't actually use them. They just stare, doe-eyed and utterly enraptured, at the sleek lucite and brushed aluminum, totally lost in the beauty of its industrial design. Occasionally they caress the device or whisper sweet nothings to it.

    2. Re:i know! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      my precious

    3. Re:i know! by ContractualObligatio · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, I didn't even take mine out of the box. I know it was perfect the day Steve Jobs announced it, why sully it with the imperfect air which I breathe? Let it's perfection remain untarnished for ever more!

  2. Ummmm by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So is it really more likely there are 700,000 mysteriously missing iPhones, or perhaps the number of people buying them to unlock is higher than they think?

    Does the number of ATT activations also include the pre-paid plans, or just the contracts?

  3. Re:Terrorists buying them to make a Beowulf Cluste by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Funny
    The iPhone is the cool new thing.

    Totally. Kim Jong Il got one, and now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama Bin Laden are really jealous, to the point that it's threatening to completely disrupt the Axis of Evil. It doesn't help that Osama got a brown Zune for Christmas and now Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are teasing him mercilessly about it.

  4. Re:Terrorists buying them to make a Beowulf Cluste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually Osama's not so pissed that he got a Zune as that he got it for Christmas .