Comments on: Numbers Question

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:30:10 +0000

I knew my readers would have informative add-ons to that story. Thanks!

I also found it interesting that, because of the timing against the quarter (as Augie noted), these numbers are mostly first- or second-day purchases. Which gives some indication of how many people just had to have it right then.

By: Augie De Blieck Jr.

Augie De Blieck Jr. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:13:18 +0000

Without using a workaround, the iPhone is a brick until you activate it, which is done through iTunes, not even at the store, itself. So you can’t just buy it to use it as a small iPod.

Yes, the big problem is that some people had big delays in activation time. As many predicted, the weak link in the iPhone roll out was AT&T.

Others, I imagine, might have bought them for work or for gifts, and so may have activated them at later times.

And, then, there are the fun stories of the idiots who waited in line to put them on eBay. Since the phone didn’t really sell out that weekend, it wasn’t a collectible at all.

But, again, because the iPhone was released with only about 32 hours left to go in the quarter, all the numbers will be a touch lower than expected.

By: Hal

Hal — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:33:46 +0000

I’m just guessing here, not knowing how the activation process worked, but a lot of people may have just used their existing ATT account. If I remember right, the iPhone is GSM, which just uses a chip that you can swap between phones. If so, those users could have just taken their chip and dropped it into the iPhone. They may not have gotten as far in the first day or two to add any additional feature sets to their accounts OR if they already had the internet add-on to their account, that may have covered them on the iPhone.

But, again, just guessing.

By: Ray Cornwall

Ray Cornwall — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:27:20 +0000

“Did half the buyers of the hardware really not activate them?”

Actually, this does seem to be what happened, at least during the two days that were reported in the quarter. Many users had problems getting their phones activated in the first few days of the rollout. I expect that next quarter’s numbers will show a tighter relationship between the numbers of phones sold and the number of AT&T accounts activated.

Full disclosure: I’m a contractor for AT&T, although I have nothing to do with the wireless division.

By: Glaurung

Glaurung — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:59:25 +0000

The Iphone has a lot of uses — play MP3s, play videos, surf the web and check email over a WIFI connection, and I think you can use it as a PDA thing to store contact info and the like. With all that, it hardly needs to be used as a cellphone to be a desireable purchase by those who are into such gadgets.