“AT&T Inc. sold almost all its initial stock of Apple Inc.’s iPhone within hours of the device going on sale, an AT&T spokesman said on Saturday,” Reuters reports. “An Apple spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the number of iPhones sold at its 162 U.S. outlets.”
“‘Virtually all of our stores sold out of the iPhone last night,’ AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said, declining to specify how many units had been sold,” Reuters reports.
“AT&T… runs about 1,800 stores in the United States,” Reuters reports.
Asked about problems that some iPhone buyers were having with activating their phones, Siegel said the “vast majority” of customers were able to begin using their phones within minutes,” Reuters reports. “‘There are some whose activation process is being delayed and that’s something that can happen in a launch like this and we’re resolving those on a case-by-case basis,’ Siegel said.”
Full article here.
Yes, the bloodbath has commenced.
Still waiting to hear how many have been sold and how many will be made available over next few weeks..
Hopefully in about 3-4 weeks we’ll know how many people have these things.
How long do you guys think until they are widely available without back orders?
I had problems, itunes gave me a new number.
The warm glow of being proven right permeates the atmosphere!
Our local store in the Lansing, MI area was sold out in less than half an hour after the doors opened.
Apple will probably let us know when the first million units have been sold. It could be as early as Monday.
Imagine what that piece of news would do for AAPL – the most optimistic analyst estimates of 200,000 sales during the launch weekend now look like the low-end of the range. I’d estimate sales at 400,000+.
@crabapple
??How were you right??
I too, would like to know how many iPhones were sold last night
The big wave has yet to arrive. This was just the initial “oh-oh”, somethings not right, as the Tsunami in the distance builds energy. This time next year the playing field is going to be very different with many of today’s key mobile players saying “what the fsck was that????” as there stock reaches for new lows.
What I would be interested in finding out is if they broke the world record for the most number of phones sold in one day and the most number of phones activated in the shortest period of time. I am sure both those records have fallen, that is why some iphone owners have been unable to register as smoothly and easily as others.
This info will help to mitigate the few individuals who have “suffered” I say that with a pinch of salt and also it will show just how many people are tech savvy provided the technologies are designed and engineered by people who care, as opposed to those buck toothed, wrench wielding so called smart phone manufacturers!
It looks like all you need to do to “estimate” iPhone sales is to ask Apple how many they’ve put into the pipeline at any give moment. Apple should release this number (and future manufacturing numbers) because it is clear it will sell every iPhone it can make for the foreseeable future. Doing so will stop idle speculation from “analysts.”
Unlike Microsoft, Apple will not have to count units sitting in inventory as a “sale” because there will not be any units collecting dust in inventory.
I am one of the delayed users. I was just promised that they would have it resolved within 72 hours.
I am not happy about the delay, but I hope it gets resolved soon. However I am an AT&T customer, so i was able to move the SIM card from the iPhone to my old one to have cell coverage. I would be furious if I was coming from another carrier and was with out a phone.
The old SIM card was deactivated and can’t be used, so i wou
@ Hotinplaya, I am not alone in being right, there were several of us who blogged with regards to Apple having a history of launching thoroughly tried and tested products leading to a faithful Applelyte club.
We also discussed how the first Mac was way ahead of its time and set the mould for all others to follow.
How the software is unparalled and the fact that it was soo ahead of its time that the internet was created using it in the form of NEXTstep.
The argument lay in the fact that AT&T did not have a similar track record, so Apple pulled its experts from Leopard to help AT&T Q&A their network in order that yesterday could happen as smoothly as it did, albeit the heavy demand on it.
It was the right decision to delay Leopard as we now see events unfold and to top the hot chocolate with marshmallows or cream (depending on your taste) Vista is still so far up the balmy ones rear oriface that it still has not caught up with Tiger, despite copying it like a Xerox machine!!!:-)
Need I go on?
AT&T & iphone are up and running & expanding already, Bring on Leopard I say!
I’m still waiting for my phone to be activated and it’s been 19 hours!!! I’m an apple fan, and stock holder, but I’m getting pissed!!!
From what I understand about the iPhone, I think that it is great technology and should make life easier for all mobile telephone slaves. Kudos to Apple for the iPhone.
But the brag that AT&T ran out of iPhones simply reflects that Apple has historically never had its act together with being able to keep up with volume demand for its popular products, in my opinion.
My activation was flawless and took about 3 minutes. Couldn’t be happier!
10 hours in line. 20 minutes to buy phone after doors opened at 6:00pm. 30 minutes to drive home and walk dogs. 10 minutes to photograph OBE (Out of Box Experience). Download iTunes 7.3, 10 minutes. Restart and rebuild permissions (yes, I know, very anal…). Connect iPhone and sign up with AT&T, 2 minutes. Final activation on iPhone, 3 minutes.
Then I remembered to eat something.
Perhaps AT&T got all the phones they asked for…
@ Reality Check, You are right!! You have hit the head on the nail!!! ha haaa!!
AT&T Have almost run out of iphones & indeed in some stores they have!
Some Apple stores probably ahev run out too and I wouldn’t be surprised if the stores that did not have a rush have been asked to dispatch their extar phones to the ones that have run out.
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?
The Balmy one can teach Apple a lesson today! I never thought I would hear myself say that!
The lesson is how not to run out of stock almost after a product release.
The Balmy one did not run out of Zunes on release, is not out of stock on Zunes, months after release, will never run out of stock as far the Zune is concerned!!!! Aaaaaaha! ha! ha! haaaa!!!!!!!:-)
i waited in line at at & t store on 17th st & 6th avenue in manhattan from 3pm.. there were about 60 people ahead of me. so heck i thought i would get one for sure. after all that waiting, they ran out about 10 people infront of me. which means they only had about 50 or so. i was frustrated so ordered online to realize the shipping estimate of 2-4 weeks! my friend ran and bought one at apple store on 5th avenue and bought me one too! but now at & t (i recently changed my service from sprint to at & t to avoid this sort of problem), is taking forever to activate my iphone. it’s been over 2 hours and it also deactivated my sim card in my temporary at & t phone! without phone and waiting for an iphone to activate is painful! but it’s so pretty just to stare at it…
It’s glorious living in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area: 4 Apple stores and numerous AT&T stores. iPhones a plenty out here with 0 line wait time. In fact, all our Apple stores still have stock.
Five minutes and I was activated and up and running. So easy it scared.
Ummm, there was one minor glitch. Some dumba$$ forgot to plug the USB hub that the iPhone dock was plugged into back into my MacBook Pro when it was set up.
Cool Web Apps are starting to show up. Great list maker here: http://www.listingly.com/
AT&T stores in Huntsville, Alabama received smaller second shipment this morning. Both stores have sold out. They are expecting more shipment this coming week, but they have no date of arrival.
The Nashville Apple stores have sold old this morning, but they are receiving another shipment to go on sell tomorrow morning at 9 AM.
AT&T is indicating they can ship free to your home in 3 to 5 business days. If you don’t receive, you can cancel your order.
– Brian
I went by an Apple Store today to touch one. There was still a line
of about 20 people out front waiting for a new shipment. It looks like
the shipment had arrived because when I left, everybody was standing.
There were about 10 iPhones configured for display at one table. Every
one was being fondled by somebody.
I had about 5 minutes with an iPhone and I find that it is a pretty
slick package, for what it is. It is a content consumption device, not
a content creation device. It may run a version of OS X, but it isn’t
set up to replace, or even get close to replacing, a portable
computer.
However, within it’s scope, it seems to do quite well. I think that
the hype over the keyboard is entirely overblown. It took me about 15
seconds to get used to it and I was flying in two thumb mode and I have
big thumbs. It does a good job at rendering web pages that were not
designed for a small screen (like this one). By turning the iPhone
sideways to allow larger text, it was readable without sideways
scrolling or magnification. When the iPhone is held sideways, the
location bar goes away so that you have to turn it portrait to go to
type a new URL. I made a phone call, it worked. I didn’t get a chance
to play with the iPod function or the other programs on it.
I’ve long said, it doesn’t matter how many fanbois buy up Apple’s iPhone at launch, what matters is how much “legs” this product has, and how well it will resonate with the rest of the buying public.
How well iPhone does on launch weekend will be great bragging point, but what really matters is how well this thing is doing 3-6 weeks from now, when all the initial buying frenzy is past, and the fence sitters buy or don’t buy an iPhone.
@ tmf By that time, the fence sitters will have their rear oriface split in half by the fence!!!
I’m not really surprised to hear that AT&T sold out so quickly with all of those lines, and that there were some activation problems. That’s really to be expected. I hope that new iPhone owners will be able to get their problems resolved quickly.
I’m kind of disappointed with the news media (yeah, I know, big surprise, huh?). They loved showing the people in the iLines, and we got a bunch of comments by “so-called” experts who were there to bad-mouth the iPhone.
The problem was that nobody bothered to ask the store managers how many iPhones that they were given. That seemed like a very important thing to ask all of these people. Oh well.
Within the world of the non-iPhone sales folks – the word “unlimited call plans/free minuets ” is going to be taking on some really shocking new meaning by monday morning!
When you walk up and find that you don’t have anything to sale – price becomes you only back up position!