Strong demand that brought Verizon’s website to its knees has resulted in Verizon Wireless selling out on iPhone pre-orders.
Verizon Wireless’ website now states, “We are no longer taking pre-sale orders. Experience yours when it’s available online and in stores. Online 02.09.11, 3:01 AM EST. In stores 02.10.11, 7:00 AM local time.”
Verizon began online pre-orders for Apple’s revolutionary iPhone yesterday, February 3, at 3 AM EST.
Sinead Carew reports for Reuters, “Verizon Wireless ended online sales of Apple Inc’s iPhone on Thursday evening after what it said was ‘the most successful first day sales in the history of the company.’ [Verizon] said it ceased pre-orders at 8:10 p.m. EST after opening limited pre-orders for the device to its existing customers at 3 AM Thursday morning.”
Carew reports, “Verizon Wireless Chief Executive, Dan Mead said in a statement that in its first two hours of iPhone sales the company ‘had already sold more phones than any first-day launch’ in its history.”
Full article here.
Verizon Wireless’ press release, verbatim:
At 8:10 p.m. EST yesterday, Verizon Wireless ceased online orders of iPhone 4 to existing customers and ended the most successful first day sales in the history of the company.
“This was an exciting day,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer for Verizon Wireless. “In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history. And, when you consider these initial orders were placed between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., it is an incredible success story. It is gratifying to know that our customers responded so enthusiastically to this exclusive offer – designed to reward them for their loyalty.”
“I am proud of our employees who worked tirelessly to strengthen and scale our systems, enabling unprecedented customer orders through our website. Overall, it was a very good day,” he added. Mead also said customers will have another opportunity at being among the nation’s first to own an iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network. “Yesterday’s launch set the pace for next week when we open up sales to everyone across America.”
The general market launch of the iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will occur on Feb. 10. The company will open its more than 2,000 Verizon Wireless Communications Stores at 7 a.m. It will also be available at all Apple store locations, Best Buy, select Wal-Mart stores, and online at www.verizonwireless.com and www.apple.com.
Source: Verizon Wireless
MacDailyNews Take: Boom!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Ordered mine at 3am. Got notice that it was shipping today with a Monday delivery
Another tidal wave of sales for Apple never hurts.
Dang, I wasn’t able to get one due to the problems on their site- and was going to try again today. Guess another week won’t hurt anything.
I meant “3am the first day”
Wonder how many phones they had for pre-sale. And I wonder how many android phones they sold for their pre-sale. Would be interesting to see the numbers.
Remember the old IBM commercial where they were touting online businesses? The 4 people open their online store with a push of a button and then wait for an order to appear- then, ding! and order pops up and they celebrate. then you hear ding! ding! ding!. They are ecstatic at they sales. Then the dings start coming faster than the computer can keep up and the people look at each other and go uhoh.. Wonder if that scenario happened at Verizon…
We are getting geared up to buy 6 of them – probably around April for our corporate purchase …
Good news indeed.
However, how many are going to be crying in June?
@Richie
Oh Yea! I’ll bet they are rethinking their throttle back strategy as well. The top 5 could become the top 10 or 20% very quickly.
verizon and apple were brilliant for this move. they will sell another boatload when iphone 5 comes out in half a year
veriPhonezon has no doubt seen the light. I know a lot of people who are dropping their Android & Berries on the big V and going iPhone.
On Verizon’s website, I would like to have seen a live counter, displaying the pre-slaes numbers as they occurred.
I wonder if it would have looked like the Apple website counter showing the App sales approaching 10 Billion.
@Richie
Yeah, I think that IBM commercial with the accelerating website orders is likely a good analogy to what Verizon was seeing and feeling as the iPhone orders poured in.
Fun, eh!
STRIKE ONE
Didn’t the Android crowd brag about those ‘Droid’ launches on Verizon as proof Apple was doomed?
STRIKE TWO
Did you see the latest survey that over half of all Verizon’s current Android and Rim users want the Verizon iPhone?
STRIKE THREE
Did you also see that the Google and the Androidabator crowd has been lying about the global sale of Androids which implied that the world wants Android?
ANDROID IS OUT
It seems Google included figures where the Chinese manufacturer has removed everything unique to Google’s Android making it a different Linux product that was forked from Android all together. That means their huge base of far east customers will never ever use Google Android market apps expanding the regular user base for our economically depressed Android developers.
It does make one wonder how successful the Android would be today if the iPhone were in Verizon from day one. I’m thinking iPad-like dominance among smartphones.
Probably already outsold WP7
“In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history”.
Anybody knows Verizon’s previous first day launch record?
But… but… I thought that everyone in the world that wanted an iPhone 4 already had one and the iPhone doesn’t even run Flash. — Stunned and deluded Android fanboi
Hemodroid, meet Preparation A[pple]!
Maybe Verizon’s computer systems blew up badly, and they need a week to recover (get some capacity on an emergency basis). If so, I can see shutting down pre-orders. It unimpressive that they can’t continue running in the meantime, regardless.
But why did Apple stop taking orders? After all, they can handle the capacity. I get it that they exceeded their initial supply but all that is needed is to say that the ship date has changed from Feb 10.
A sneaky marketing ploy like this to spike interest is rather unlike Apple, and unnecessary. Apple does marketing ploys, but they’re much more subtle than this.
The only reason that makes any sense is that Verizon is totally overwhelmed, and they didn’t want Apple to embarrass them by having their computer systems working when Verizon’s have blown up.
If Verizon has had to pull back after only 1 day, this is not a good sign for their preparedness….
Another piece of information supporting the lack of preparedness is the sudden appearance of a data cap with rather nasty penalties that “may” be applied (throttling for the rest of the month + the next month – very customer obnoxious) to the top 5% of users at Verizon. Just in time for the iPhone launch. What is the point of this – to scare off the heavy data users from coming over from ATT? Is Verizon getting nervous about their network not being strong enough to handle the iPhone? Sure sounds like it….
All of this is very good for Apple, bad for Android, but it will won’t make Verizon look very good. Perversely, it may make ATT look good, since they’ve been struggling with this for years and have made some progress. Verizon apparently didn’t pay attention, and hasn’t prepared enough.
This will be fun to watch.
Get well Steve.
How long until iPhone accounts for 50% of the US smartphone market?
@timd
Feb 10-2011 7:01am
I think it’s pretty clear that Android has peaked. I believe that Apple will introduce a new iPhone within a year and drop the price of the current iPhone 4 models, and Apple’s advantage in materials costs is going to make it extremely difficult for anyone else to match their price, let alone their feature set.
-jcr
Apple said it would have sold more iPhones already if more were available. Understatement!
Sometimes when I’m at dog parks I see non-Apple-phone owners consulting each other over how to make their phones work, how to take a picture, etc. iPhone users just operate away! Ease of use means so much. Thank God for Apple!
Astounding, simply astounding! Best estimate I’ve heard is sold-out perhaps by Sunday, and to get it done in just 17 hours with more iPhones sold in the first 2 hours than any other phones (including all the BOGO junk knockoffs) is simply beyond words.
Of course, haters and bashers have been out wailing “epic fail” and end up eating shit as usual. They should rename Apple to RSPA (Record Sales & Profit Always). Jobs is the best CEO ever.
Apple may wait until this time next year to roll out the LTE phone. LTE will be the next big thing for Verizon and their network is not broad enough for that yet. Plus the current radio chipset is a energy hog.