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Apple Sells Nine Million iPhones Over Weekend

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-lot-of-units dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple managed to sell nine million iPhones over the weekend, with the company claiming its initial supply of high-end iPhone 5S units completely sold out. Apple didn't sell out of the new iPhone 5C, its plastic-cased (and cheaper) alternative to the iPhone 5S; models are still available for shipment within 24 hours from Apple's online store. And the iPhone 5S selling out is no surprise: in the weeks ahead of the new iPhones' launch, rumors persisted that the initial production run of the device was relatively small in scope, which would make it far easier for Apple to sell out of its first batch. But how many iPhone 5C units did Apple actually manage to sell? In August, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that Apple would produce just over 5 million iPhone 5S units ahead of the device's launch weekend; if that number's accurate, and Apple sold every single one, it would mean Apple sold roughly 4 million iPhone 5C units in order to reach that 9-million-sold figure for both models. That's an impressive figure for any smartphone, of course, and it could quiet some of the naysayers who have spent the past several months suggesting that Apple's best years are behind it."

9 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Success by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if selling 9 million high-end smartphones, according to the pundits, is "jumping the shark", I wonder what success looks like?

  2. Re:Sorry - Apple is still dying. by DJCouchyCouch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple's been dying for over 30 years.

  3. Re:Maybe it's just me, but... by Above · · Score: 5, Informative

    iPhone 5s "T-Moble Contract Free" prices, are $649, $749, and $849, depending on the amount of storage. See iPhone 5s. The iPhone 5C prices are $549, $649. See iPhone 5c.

    Using an average price of $649, and 9 million units sold, that's $5.84 billion in revenue. That doesn't could any accessories (cases, car chargers, etc) or Apple Care sales.

    GTA V made a relatively puny $1 billion. You know, chump change.

  4. Some perspective by necro81 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When Steve Jobs got up there and announced the first iPhone, he stated that Apple had relatively modest goals. Of the 1 billion cellphones in the world, Apple hoped to get the iPhone to represent just 1% - or ten million units. They completely blew that goal out of the water. Now they can hit that mark in a single product launch weekend.

  5. Feeble minds. by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People forget when Microsoft injected cash in Apple when it was going nowhere.

    Mightier companies than Apple have fallen, and unfortunately for them it begins to look like they are living from a "perception marketing bubble".

    Remember Nokia? It was washing the floor with the competition. Apple did very well to change some of the paradigms of the mobile phone platform, but they have contributed very little and the release of "cheaper" iPhones recognizes that the only differentiator now is in price not in features.

    And that is the problem for Apple: to keep charging for a phone that does pretty much the same as any other you have to resort to gimmicks: selling golden phones for example, in technology that can take you only so far.

    Proof: people wanted a phone just because it was golden. That is not innovation, is hype, sooner or later the bubble will burst and all the chickens will come home to roost.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
    1. Re:Feeble minds. by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      People forget when Microsoft injected cash in Apple when it was going nowhere.

      Actually, Apple didn't need Microsoft's money. It was instead a very cavalier move that was meant more as a signal to developers than anyone else - that if Microsoft was investing in Apple, they should too. Microsoft sold their shares a few years later, making a tidy profit from it.

      And it worked because developers jumped on the Apple bandwagon again. It was the only way to avoid the death spiral of developers leaving, which force users to switch, which cause more developers to leave, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention that during this time, Office for Mac became a much preferred version of Office (over the Windows version) because Microsoft wasn't screwing around with stuff as much (it was way more Mac-like an application than Office Windows was a Windows application).

      Proof: people wanted a phone just because it was golden. That is not innovation, is hype, sooner or later the bubble will burst and all the chickens will come home to roost.

      Actually, it is innovation. It's not technological innovation. In fact, Apple does not do technological innovation. They do practical innovation. And by that, I mean by making technology appropriate to the customer. There was nothing new in ANY Apple product that could not have been done by anyone else. Other than the fact that anyone else didn't do it.

      The iMac proved form factor and colors were what people wanted - they wanted a PC that wasn't just a beige box that looked ugly - they wanted a PC that looked stylish and would fit just fine in the living room and not hidden away in a den or "computer room". They wanted a PC they could show off with.

      And in a way, it really broke out from the PC modding craze where PC modders would add lights, windows and other bling to their computers to turn them from beige boxes to flashy things that Did Important Stuff. Just a bit more tasteful, though.

      People wanted something different, Apple's experimenting with that - colorful phones, and a color few have ever seen in a phone. Which will pan out? Who knows, who cares. If the 5C sales a dismal, it means people didn't want color, so Apple won't bother trying to make colorful phones anymore. (If you don't try, you don't know).

      Likewise, fingerprint sensors are old hat - they've been around for decades. But Touch ID is somewhat different - it puts the sensor on a surface people touch anyways so at the same time you're using the button, it's reading your fingerprint. It's somewhat "magical" in that most fingerprint sensors require you to use them explicitly - to unlock my PC, I need to slide my finger over the sensor. Here, I do a motion I'd do anyways, and it automatically reads and unlocks. It's like how in the movies the computer would recognize the user when they approach.

      Siri wasn't new either. Just Apple put it in a "fun" form factor that most people were not aware of.

      Touchscreens, ditto - but add a proximity sensor and it suddenly gets a whole lot more useful that you're not accidentally pushing onscreen objects. And you can do a "magical" thing and put a big fat "End Call" button on the screen so when they remove the phone from their face, it shows up and the user wonders if the phone is psychic. (It happened to me the first couple of times I used an iPhone. Then logic set in and the wonder goes away).

      Too much technology is tied up in shit UIs and poor UXes because they're often invented by engineers (who are not designers or user interaction researchers), so they just toss crap up and expect people to know. For someone in the field, yes, great, but for the common user, they want to know if they can use it, and how useful it would be to them. Apple excels at that - where an engineer would go "Why would you do that? A user might need that option!" Apple goes "Well, our research shows that 90% of users don't care about it and amon

  6. Re:Maybe it's just me, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have to post anon because I work for AT&T. As normal this time of year all employees are on red alert, no new vacations can be scheduled because of the iphone release, and many of use have to go on mandatory overtime. Apple, realizing it was an incremental update, laid down some new rules for us. Many of our call centers could not sell it, and we had to force the majority of users that normally called into to order it, to use our website. Oddly enough our response to the new Iphone was less than stellar as it had been in previous years, and we saw very few customers seeing it as a must have device. And we were shipped absurdly small amounts of units so we could sell out quickly. You can still get them in places like Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart. Plus 99.9 percent bought the phone at a subsidized price.

  7. Re: none of them are being held right!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's good enough for me

  8. Re:Sorry - Apple is still dying. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Declared dead 63 times since April 1995

    It's funny because the early quotes don't sound that much different than the recent ones:

    1995

    Unless somebody pulls a rabbit out of a hat, companies tend to have long glide slopes because of the installed bases. But Apple is just gliding down this slope and they're loosing market share every year. Things start to spiral down once you get under a certain threshold. And when developers no longer write applications for your computer, that's when it really starts to fall apart.

    1996

    These facts were summed up by Stan Dolberg of Forrester Research who said, "whether they stand alone or are acquired, Apple as we know it, is cooked." [Article found through David Pogue's column "The Desktop Critic: Reality Check 2000" in Macworld Magazine, where the quote still resides.]

    One day Apple was a major technology company with assets to make any self-respecting techno-conglomerate salivate. The next day Apple was a chaotic mess without a strategic vision and certainly no future.

    1997

    I'm a Mac lover, but last year I switched over completely to Windoze because Apple couldn't build a reasonable laptop. I really want it to succeed, but I think the company's finished. Software vendors aren't turning out enough code to keep the Mac as a really good platform, even for family and school stuff. This whole NeXT decision seems to be a waste of time. It should have been sold to HP for $35 per share a year and a half ago.

    2000

    Steve Jobs can't run companies, but he has proven that he is a genius at motivating teams of people to produce extraordinary products. In fact, he may be the greatest project team leader in the history of high tech. That is no small achievement. But it does not translate to being the CEO of a giant corporation. Jobs failed the first time running Apple, failed at Next and only succeeded at Pixar because the company worked around him. He succeeded in the short term during this, his second, Apple tenure because he ran the whole company as a product team. That only works so long. Why is he a poor CEO? Because he's mercurial, insufficiently engaged by the more boring (but crucial) operations like distribution and, ultimately, because he's a pretty nasty piece of work. In the best of all scenarios, Jobs would hire a competent CEO and focus on product development, but his ego would soon lead him to undermine his replacement. Steve Jobs is Apple's Alcibiades: the company can't live without him, or with him.

    Investors may be asking themselves what Apple can do to revive its fortunes. The likely answer, unfortunately, is that Steve Jobs has no white rabbits left in his hat. Apple appears to be facing a dead end in its business growth, the victim of mismanagement and unmitigated hubris. Apple lovers are a loyal bunch, and they'll probably stick with the company. But Jobs's dream of becoming the world's biggest computer-maker will likely remain just that -- a dream.