Where Are The Extra iPhones?
Big discrepancy between Apple’s and AT&T’s numbers
Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that Apple had sold 4 million iPhones in 2007, AT&T received under 2 million customers. The new question is: Where are all those extra iPhones?
According to Tom Krazit, some of them are in Europe, and others, possibly, were unlocked and taken to a different carrier. But that doesn’t still doesn’t add up to 2 million.
The leading theory, according to financial analyst Toni Sacconaghi, is that those iPhones are still on the store shelves, wagging their tails and waiting for a new family to take them home.
There could be a number of reasons the iPhone’s not selling as well as predicted, all of which critics might have seen coming: too expensive (even after the first price cut), too slow, too expensive on a monthly basis, too locked in to one carrier – unless you’ve got the savvy to unlock one.
But also, the competition didn’t waste much time releasing reasonable substitutes with touch screens and similar capabilities. In some instances, the capabilities were better because they were more compatible with Microsoft document software, badly needed in business.
In short, the coolness factor of the iPhone wasn’t enough to convince people to turn away from their carriers, or their practicalities.
So it doesn’t take much clairvoyance to predict again that if Apple wants to meet that 10 million sold in 2008 target, they’re going to have be pretty aggressive. That could mean cheaper iPhones, faster iPhones, more practical iPhones, and less restricted iPhones.
That is, unless they’re going to abandon iPhone dreams in the hopes the Macbook Air bails them out – which it won’t. It has the same very cool, ultra-hip problems the iPhone has: too expensive, not enough functionality, and too slow. It’s only a matter of months before PC notebooks come out advertising thinness and touch-screens with more practical functionality and at a much cheaper cost.
With an optical drive, too.
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