OK, who bet the under on iPhone activations in the first 30 hours?
AT&T reported some pretty handsome quarterly results today, with earnings up 61 percent, thanks to the BellSouth acquisition, new wireless subscribers and stronger business sales. But the number that seemed to get the most attention was the number of iPhone activations that were completed in the 30 hours between the sales launch and the end of June. The telecom said 146,000 subscribers hooked their new iPhones to the network during that time — a figure that struck some observers as a little … sparse. After all, analysts’ estimates of sales the first weekend ranged from 250,000 to 700,000 (see “New iPhone feature: 500K installed base“). The gap sent some Apple stockholders heading for the exit.
But before anybody gets too worked up, there are mitigating factors to consider. For starters, the analyst estimates were pretty much pulled out of a hat. Also, this is activations, not units sold, and the activation system was seriously overloaded during those first few days. Still other first-weekend buyers may have been so hypnotized by their glossy gadget that they didn’t get around to activating it until days later. Whatever the case, the number is pretty much meaningless without more context, some of which will likely come tomorrow during Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call.
I am not suprised at all that even the majority of iPhone purchasers would wait for the “phirst wave” of activators to possibly overload the system, expose system bugs, and otherwise experience crowd-rush related problems. If you have your iPhone in hand, you certainly have 2-3 days to get around to activate.
Presumably also, any iPhones bought as presents will still stay sealed in the box?
And I’m guessing some are waiting for plans from other carriers to expire so numbers can be ported over.
Hmmm, where did they all go?
There are only 540 iphones for sale on ebay right now under the search “iphone” for over $400 (after excluding those nice Pradas that are comparing themselves).
Speaking as someone who just went through a really tiresome experience trying to activate a company phone with ATT, it’s no wonder. iPhone people probably just hung up and went off to download some tunes…