Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is estimating Apple sold half a million iPhones from 6 p.m. Friday through the close of business on Sunday. With the devices going for $500 to $600, that’s around $250 to $300 million in cash changing hands, depending on the mix of 4GB and 8GB units sold.
With margins on the device in the 20-50% range (probably closer to the lower end), that leaves an estimated $50 to $150 million in profit.
Not a bad weekend for Apple.
this is very good news for iphone content providers, accessory makers, service providers etc etc…a whole new breed of companies are forming right now based solely on iphone – this isn’t a revolution; it’s an evolution.
Surely the cost of the iphone is more like at least $1,000 per unit – the 2 year AT&T contract offsets the $5-600 upfront price. Also I’d be suprised if they’re making as much as 20% profit per phone – at least at this stage.
None the less, that’s a pretty good start in my books!
Isn’t the early termination fee at $176 for an iPhone’s 2-year contract? That would point to the iPhone (unsubsidized) being around $775, not $1000.
They will archive the 10 million unit goal before the end of the year.
sure looks that way.
their strategy was pretty good. With several partnership anouncements everyday, the message was clear “The Industry is Following Us, so this is your essential tool”.
Thanks TechCrunch.com! Just used this information for an article I just wrote. Read about it @: http://www.mark...-weekend-sales/
I don’t know about 10M by the end of 2007, but since Apple’s plan was 10M by the end of 2008 that’s looking pretty good.
On the other hand how much do you trust an analyst who changes his mind by TWO AND A HALF TIMES over the course of a weekend and has no shame at all?
It doesn’t matter though, 300K, 500K, whether they get to 10 million in 6 or 18 months…whether Edge sucks or not (it does, compared to WiFi)…it’s a hit.
I’m still waiting on activation after 58 hours while they count there money.
I can predict that iPhone will become an industry standard and the most popular mobile phone ever
).
German IT news site Heise reports that according to market research firm Global Equities Research they sold only 200.000 iPhones on the first weekend.
Looks like its better to be in the Phone business than in the movie business that’s for sure.
@William – So what’s new? I am probably the only person in the universe predicting the iPhone will be a flop… in the medium and long term, I guess, since the short term looks pretty healthy.
YES MORE IPHONE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE IPHONE. SCREW STARTUPS. ALL HAIL IPHONECRUNCH.com
jesus, have you guys not been paying attention to the comments?
I think this proves that the $599 price point isn’t the primary source of slow sales of the PS3.
@Chris
Either that, or Sony should’ve paid Apple to put their logo on the PS3, because the little apple makes price points disappear for alot of people.
“Surely the cost of the iphone is more like at least $1,000 per unit”
What the hell are you talking about? Marcus
Iphone has already been analyzed to cost no more than $300 to make.
and I Quote, “it will cost about $230 to build the 4GB version that will sell for $499 and about $265 to build the 8GB version that will sell for $599.”
Read the whole thing here,
http://www.busi...mpaign_id=msnbc
and how can a Iphone cost more than a Mac Book? You are clearly crazy…
Analyst estimates are rarely worth the paper they’re written on, but the most significant item in the Piper Jaffray analysis is that over 50% of the sales were to people new to AT&T.
This either suggests that IDC’s earlier estimate of slow growth outside the early adopter set is conservative, or the early adopter population for this product is a lot larger than people thought:
http://www.idc....Id=prUS20741807
Unfortunately at least 50% of iPhones sold seem to have gone to scalpers. If you check eBay and Craigslist the market is flooded with second-hand sales. Everyone and their grandmother wants to sell you an iPhone for “only $1200.” But they’re quickly realizing that they weren’t the only ones with that idea. iPhones are selling for maybe $50 more. But many sales on eBay have gone for UNDER cost. HA!
By allowing the gold diggers to buy two iPhone at a time Apple did a big disservice to those wanting to legitimately buy the product for their own personal use. The promise of buying through the Apple Online store was tainted by a shipping time of 2-4 weeks and a pokey online experience that lost carts and double-added products.
I want my iPhone. But I am rapidly losing patience with the situation. Perhaps I will just wait for the 3G version.
They’ll never sustain the growth – this is classic early adopter launch rush. 99.5% of people are not going to pay that kind of cash for a phone on contract. Probably helps that the US has beenn starved of good handsets
“What the hell are you talking about? Marcus”
“Iphone has already been analyzed to cost no more than $300 to make.”
I meant the cost to the consumer (which as it would happen would appear to be $775 – I stand corrected), not the cost to manufacture. Anyway the cost of making a device is not just the sum of the parts required to build it – Apple surely invested millions and millions into the initial research (which has probably been going on for years), setting up the infastructure necessary to support such a venture – which has to be factored in … at least at the beginning. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just forget about upfront costs when declaring our profit
A key question for Cingular is simply, how many of those phones were sold to new accounts, or people replacing their older Cingular (ATT) phones?
The cost may be $200-$300 per item, but this doesn’t factor in the research and development cost which was probably tens of millions of dollars.
Also, marketing and advertising was at least $40-50 million spent so far.
Long term, I don’t think the iPhone will thrive to even a fraction of the level of market dominance the iPod has shown. Apple has once again taken a “closed platform” approach to their device and that will eventually drive down market share. It’s kind of ironic that there is such an allegiance to Apple within the Web 2.0 world when they are philosophically opposite to the collaborative mindset of the 2.0 space.
I had a friend play with my iPhone who had previously stated that he was not going to buy a 1st gen iPhone 15 min latter he was off to the Apple store to buy one. I think Apple has a smash success on their hands, now it all about apple continuing to add feature to the phone over the next year via software. It will also be very important for them to release a new handset at least one a year…
As far as ability to sustain sales go, people seem to be missing one very important detail: cell contracts. The people who bought over the weekend either are AT&T customers, not currently in contract or willing to pay to get out of their current contract. If the estimates of 50% of purchases came from other carriers are close to true then we have an idea how many are in the AT&T group. Most people seem to be perpedually under contract, but they eventually do run out. The only thing keeping my wife and I from the purchase is our Verizon contract that runs out in March. There is nothing conceivable they can to to prevent us from bailing. As more and more contracts end month after month, many of those people will go to buy their iPhone. Obviously, they can’t sustain a rate of 500,000 every three days, but it’s quite possible that it will be still be very hot for months to come.