“Those one million iPhone 3Gs sold this weekend provide a pretty good clue for why Apple and AT&T’s activation servers are slammed and barely able to keep up. This was a big deal. Why? Because not only was it about 4 times more phones than Apple had to deal with last year at this time, but because it is probably the largest consumer electronics launch in history,” Carl Howe blogs for Yankee Group.
“The original 2007 iPhone launch was the largest first weekend consumer electronics launch in history as measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, garnering somewhere around $150 million in its first weekend on sale. That eclipsed the Microsoft XBox 360 ($128 million in the first weekend), Microsoft Windows 95 ($122 million in the first four days), and the Sony Betamax (not even close at $58 million in the first 7 months). But Apple just broke its own record. Assuming an average price after carrier subsidy of $433 (2/3 8 GByte models, 1/3 16 GByte models), Apple just posted approximately $433 million in first weekend iPhone sales. Said another way, if this had been a movie, it would have broken all box office records for a first weekend opening — by a factor of nearly 3,” Howe writes.
“Yes, there were a lot of server and activation problems this weekend, and both Apple and its carrier partners should get their acts together. But making history is never easy or smooth,” Howe writes.
More in the full post – highly recommended, as are most of Howe’s musings on Apple – here.
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