The power of a single brand never ceases to amaze me. We all know how powerful Apple is to the masses. What we didn’t know was that they’d smash records by selling 4 million of their newest handset, the iPhone 4S, on opening weekend. The new phone went on sale last Friday, October 14, and now Apple is reporting (from their swimming pool full of gold) that they’ve out-done themselves. Sure, the phone is good, great even. I guess all those people that were mad it wasn’t named the iPhone 5 got over it.
With numbers that more than doubled the release of the iPhone 4’s sales of 1.7 million last year, it’s no surprise that activation servers crashed and many people who ordered online had to go to an Apple store to activate it. Mike Abramsky, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, gives credit to positive reviews, higher availability and the timing from the 3GS, which came 2 years after the initial iPhone release. That means that people were up for a new phone and decided to wait for this one as opposed to choosing the iPhone 4.
Also boosting numbers was the fact that Apple had more units on-hand, versus prior years when the devices sold out quickly. I guess it’s just going to be that much harder for Samsung and HTC, the largest competitors in the mobile hardware market, to catch up.
If you’re curious, the unlocked iPhone 4S 16GB will sell for $650 starting in November. Assuming the above numbers (most people would buy the 16GB, fewer buy the 64GB) and at the unlocked prices (which varies from what Apple charges carriers for their subsidized prices) then Apple raked in no more than $2,796,000,000 in just one weekend. Not too bad, guys.
Source: Bloomberg
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