In fact, close to one half — if not more — of the iPhone 3Gs sold between the handset's launch on July 11th and the end of Apple's September quarter were purchased internationally.
As part of its fiscal fourth quarter earnings report last Tuesday, the first quarter in which the iPhone 3G was available, Apple said it shipped 6,892,000 of the devices.
During an ensuing conference call, company chief operating officer Tim Cook addressed an inventory related question in which he noted that Apple was shipping to carriers in 51 countries by the end of the quarter, which combine for over 30,000 iPhone distribution points.
"To be precise, at the end of the quarter, I can tell you that we had about 2 million iPhones in total channel inventory across all of the 51 countries and we feel that these inventory [levels are] about right," he said.
That means that while Apple shipped nearly 6,892,000 million units, its sell-through was approximately 2 million shy of that figure, or 4,892,000 iPhones. The rest, as explained by Cook, were still on store shelves or in warehouses at the time of the financial call. Apple considers all shipped iPhones as sold.
The final piece of the puzzle arrived a day later when AT&T released its fiscal third quarter earnings, which it said were driven by 2.4 million domestic iPhone 3G activations.
Unlike with the original iPhone, Apple and AT&T now require all iPhones sold stateside to be activated — or tied to an account — at the point of sale to prevent unlocked exports, meaning the number of activations reported by the wireless carrier should correlate precisely to the number of sales.
Therefore, 4,892,000 iPhones sold, minus 2.4 million sold domestically, equates to 2,492,000, or more than half purchased internationally.
31 Comments
This "analysis" isn't very good, as it assumes Apple had zero product in the channel to begin with. This is highly unlikely.
[::Edit by Kasper: No, you're wrong. The article is correct::]
This "analysis" isn't very good, as it assumes Apple had zero product in the channel to begin with. This is highly unlikely.
They ran out of 2G iphones a long time before the 3G iphone was launched (a month before)
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2008/06...om-att-stores/
The article is inaccurate. The 4th quarter conference call clearly states , 7 minutes into the call, that 6.9 million iphones were sold , not shipped . Pretty poor reporting
[::Edit by Kasper: The article is correct, please see the below posts::]
The article is inaccurate. The 4th quarter conference call clearly states , 7 minutes into the call, that 6.9 million iphones were sold , not shipped . Pretty poor reporting
And if you listen to the first 30 seconds of the conference call --- they always say that you should rely on the SEC filing for accuracy.
And the SEC filing is about "shipment", not units sold.
And if you listen to the first 30 seconds of the conference call --- they always say that you should rely on the SEC filing for accuracy.
And the SEC filing is about "shipment", not units sold.
" The Company sold 11,052,000 iPods during the quarter, representing eight percent unit growth and three percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 6,892,000 compared to 1,119,000 in the year-ago-quarter."
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/...ex=2&type=html