I too wonder the same thing. Especially with the pre-order record for a phone that seemed to initially miss expectations upon announcement. The articles I've found on the topic are just speculative[1][2].
The missed expectations were held by fanboy contributors to MacRumors and the equally witless anti-fanboys (fandroids for the most part) who chimed in with "Ha! No new case after 18 months? Lame! Fail!"
Perhaps the buyers were at the end of a contract, or looking to upgrade, or simply saw the best phone on the market.
And tons of guy-on-the-street types (both real and those dreamed up by news media, propagating the meme further) were disappointed, too. But the frame has shifted over the last few days and now everybody's talking about Siri, theoretical teardrop case be damned.
I think it's all the people with 3GS's plus new customers jumping on to the iphone and more carriers. Numbers seem to support that.
I was on a dumbphone contract on verizon and waited on the iphone 4 until the 4s was released. Personally I wanted an iphone and would have bought on any form factor they released
Not sure why this is being downvoted - I mean, it could've probably been phrased more tactfully, but I'm the biggest Jobs (and iPhone) fan in the world and I have to agree they've gotten a ton of publicity and awareness recently. (And I don't think Jobs—who almost seemed to identify more with Apple than with Steve Jobs!—would have been bothered by that in the least.) That leading to some sales isn't surprising.
On launch weekend, the iPhone 4 sold 1.7M units in five countries. The iPhone 4S sold > 4.0M units in seven countries (the additions being Canada and Australia). The iPhone 4 launch countries had a combined population of ~644 million. The iPhone 4S launch countries had a combined population of ~700 million -- only an 8.7% increase. So the additional launch countries alone wouldn't explain the vastly increased number of sales (~135% increase).
At least from personal experience, most Apple Retail Stores didn't seem to exhaust their supply on Friday the 14th. So having more units on hand (and the usual second round of deliveries on Saturday), plus the pre-order records contributed to breaking this record. Simply having the product available was probably the biggest factor, though pre-orders (confirmation tomorrow) do indicate that demand may have increased over the iPhone 4, although some of that that could be seasonal demand.
I'm not sure on carrier counts (iPhone 4 not known, iPhone 4S launched on 22 carriers). In the US, the iPhone 4 only launched on one carrier, whereas the 4S launched on three. That's also going to be a significant contributing factor in increasing its effective availability to buyers.
It would also be interesting to look at the growth of iPhone 4 sales. I know that they were growing like crazy in the quarters after the launch. But it's hard to compare. Sales numbers right after the launch are certainly always an outlier so it might be more reasonable to wait for the following quarterly results.
Availability is a big thing, I think. For about 5 months after the iPhone launched in Australia, we couldn't keep enough of them in stock (have a box arrive Friday, all gone by Saturday arvo and none for the rest of the week).
With the 4S, we have a hundred of the damn things sitting on our shelves. If it's a similar thing in other countries, then that's probably a large part of why (vodafoneAU staff here).
That's because all the manufacturing tooling for the 4S form factor has had 18 months to scale up since the launch of the 4. That's why Apple changed as little as possible in the physical form factor.
The Galaxy S sold 10 millions units in 6 months. The Galaxy S II, largely heralded as the best phone ever made, hit 10 millions sales worldwide in 5 months (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/galaxy-s-ii-10-millio...). Apple being 40% of the way there 3 days after public release is impressive.
Anyone care to throw some more Android or other device numbers into the mix? Blackberry numbers might be a fun comparison to see, for instance.
"The Galaxy S II, largely heralded as the best phone ever made"
The best Android phone but nowhere near consensus as best phone. The iphone 4 probably sold 10 million just in this past quarter, it's 5th on the market.
Maybe "heralded by some" would have been a better choice of words. The point was that people seem to love that phone, and the 4S, which some have called a disappointment, has already reached 40% of the Galaxy S II's sales numbers within just days of being released.
On three times as many US carriers though. That's quite a bit of a difference, given how carrier-availability seems to dictate phone purchases in the US.
Your point stands, but three times as many US carriers is really only 2.5x as many subscribers; AT&T and Verizon each have about 100 million subs and Sprint has 51 million.
Increases in non-US availability notwithstanding, the 2.5x increase in US availability is close to the 2.3x increase in sales. I would expect AT&T sales to be down from the iPhone 4 and Verizon/Sprint to be up.
Sprint likely offered early upgrades to most customers who want an iPhone in order to keep them from going to Verizon or AT&T. There's probably a lot of pent up demand on Verizon from users who skipped the mid-cycle CDMA iPhone 4 in hopes of a newer iPhone a few months later. On the flip side, AT&T has been a lot stricter about early upgrades this year, leaving many who spend less than $100/month without a full subsidy until November. This is different from their past policy, where early adopter of the previous-gen iPhone users were granted early upgrades.
Microsoft's Kinect currently holds the record for Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device. It sold 8 million in the first 60 days at a rate of about 134,000/day
4QFY10 they sold: 14,100,000 unit's which is a little over 4million a month. If apple sells over 2million a month for the next 50 days they will break 8 million in the first 60 days or am I missing something?
And assuming they're evenly split between 16GB and 32GB (it's not, there's also 64GB models in the mix), it's over a billion dollars in revenue before carrier subsidies.
It's AT&T's subsidy. They pay retail (or very close to it) for the phones. They a $199 iPhone, but pay $649 for it. Apple books revenues for sales over time so they may not get it all up front (they're at least not realizing all the revenue up front), but the sale is worth the $649 value regardless of whether it was sold off contract or not.
Imagine that Timmy and Jimmy are selling lemonade on the street outside of their parents´ houses. Timmy and Jimmy are both selling three to four cups of lemonade every day. Every few days they increase the amount of sugar in their lemonade and put up signs that they now are selling a new type of lemonade.
This usually brings in lots of new people, but some are starting to get confused as both Timmy and Jimmy are selling so many different brands of lemonade.
Now Lisa moves into the block. She spends some time in her garage trying different lemonade flavors until she finds one she really likes herself. Then she goes out on the street to sell the lemonade.
People really like Lisa's lemonade. Its taste is distinctly different from Timmy's and Jimmy's. People start telling their friends about Lisa's lemonade! Soon people from the other block are starting to take the two minute bicycle ride just to get Lisa's lemonade!
When Lisa after a few weeks introduces a slightly refined version of her new lemonade she sells as much lemonade in an afternoon as Timmy and Jimmy together sell in a month!
After a while Timmy and Jimmy get angry. One night Timmy sneaks over and steals some of Lisa's lemonade. He moves his stand right next to Lisa's and even put up a sign saying "Lisa's lemonade" on his stand. The next day he shows up wearing Lisa's clothes.
Some of the customers get confused and accidentally but Timmy's lemonade instead of Lisa's.
Lisa goes home and cries to mommy. The parents get together and decide to ban Timmy from selling lemonade out on the street.
Fantastic. Thank you for that unexpectedly wonderful metaphor. I especially like the part about Sam—er, Timmy getting told on by Lisa. She's so crafty. :)
So Samsung steals iPhone and iPad stock from the factories (since they make some of the parts) and slaps a Samsung sticker on them and sells them. I get it now.
The launch "delay" probably had something to do with this as well. Anticipation was already high. Plus perhaps it allowed them to launch in more countries simultaneously.
Product delays are not always because of manufacturing issues. Sometimes it can be a business decision.
I would imagine you are on the right track about needing iOS 5/iCloud ready first. I would also add that Apple probably needs to replace the fall music event with an annual iPhone event since, although still high, iPods don't net the press of a new iPhone.
Oh yeah, the iPhone 4S is such a flop. Obviously, the lack of a new teardrop form factor is totally sales and Apple should recant from their heathen ways and do the smart thing, like the other mobile phone manufacturers.
One wonders where Technology mags find all these seemingly countless analysts who deride every iPhone (or at least are unimpressed)...
Even if the iPhone 4S would've been a worse phone than iPhone 4, they would've still sold at least a million units in first weekend. I think everyone knows that.
But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.
Even if the iPhone 4S would've been a worse phone than iPhone 4, they would've still sold at least a million units in first weekend. I think everyone knows that.
No, I don't think everyone knows that. If we learned anything from the past few Apple product launches, it's that customers aren't shy about complaining even if they aren't completely sure what they're complaining about.
But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.
It is okay. The economics behind producing this many millions of a devices doesn't allow them to change the design every single year without jacking up the price. And for what?
A "tick tock" schedule, like the one Intel has adopted, makes tons of sense for Apple too. You just can't completely rethink a product design every year once it's matured.
But that will be bad for customers. You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years. Apple is making billions in profits per quarter, and you're saying it would be bad for them to make it more often than 2 years? Then why not 3 years to save even more money?
And if you don't think they needed to change the design of the phone this time, just take a look at this:
> But that will be bad for customers. You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years.
Similarly, you don't see other manufacturers producing phones that they intend to still thoroughly support in a couple years time, which is why there is so much fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.
I think this is a key thing in Apple's market strategy across the board - you're not just buying hardware that will be out of date in 6 months time, you're purchasing a utility which will be more or less current for a couple years to come (like what we've seen in Macs).
I think its a smart move. It builds trust with the user base.
> You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years.
See the Motorola Droid 2 and 3, and the HTC Wildfire S and Desire S. And Apple's own 3GS. Essentially the same physical design as their predecessors, but faster. Actually, Samsung is perhaps the only major phone manufacturer who _doesn't_ do this; most of their phones do change reasonably dramatically on every revision.
Why wouldn't that be OK? I like when they take a product of theirs that is already very good and refine it in a bunch of small ways. All those little refinements add up. This phone really is a beautiful piece of technology.
The iPhone 3G barely had any improvement beyond the antenna and the 3GS was widely derided for being little more than "a faster 3G". The iPhone 4 was the exception to the rule of incremental hardware improvements.
It really is kind of remarkable how subtle the changes have been with iOS and the iPhone. A front shot of an iPhone on its home screen would show nothing new to someone in 2007 using the first iPhone (aside from the resolution increase). But I'd argue that what seems like a liability to industry-watchers and tech enthusiasts is a profound strength for everyone else - consistency and familiarity trump novelty.
The MacBook Pro has essentially been the same 'MacBook Pro' for quite a while now - albeit with spec upgrades every now and then. It still sells.
Why change the design of a product if that design still works? After all, how many radically different washing machine models have you seen in the last ten or fifteen years?
> But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.
You mean like the 3GS? Or, in Android-land, the Droid 2, Droid 3, Atrix 2, HTC Desire/Wildfire S etc.? It's hardly that strange a thing to do. Keep the design for a year, make the device enormously faster. This is par for the course in computers, and becoming increasingly common on the mobile market.
I didn't understand that attitude either. The iPhone 4S seemed a fairly good upgrade to the iPhone 4 which follows Apple's release pattern. Seems to me some people let the rumors of an iPhone5 cloud their judgement. After all, we've known there would be a 4S for a while now. It's just the people who should know better discounted it as a "cheap version" because they were expecting the iPhone 5.
I think people are overplaying what was actually disappointing to a lot of watchers. Everyone I know thinks the 4S is awesome.
What disappointed a lot of people is they expected a new iphone lite to compete with android at the bottom of the market.
When you think about it though, they sell a $700 phone as their main product, they aren't going to cannibalize it with a $150 phone. It's also likely they can't make a better new phone then the 3GS cheaper then the 3GS due to the scale they've built. So they're going to ride the 3GS to 30 and 40 million units a quarter.
"It's also likely they can't make a better new phone then the 3GS cheaper then the 3GS due to the scale they've built. So they're going to ride the 3GS to 30 and 40 million units a quarter."
Exactly. Why spend design resources and marketing resources on building a "low-end" phone when they already have proven (and popular) models that satisfy that demand? Presumably, they've also optimized the production lines, etc for those units to minimize costs and waste.
The $0 (w/ contract) iPhone 3GS is still a great phone for people who don't care about adding apps. (And if you're not already on an iPhone or Android at this point, you probably don't.
The $99 (w/ contract) iPhone 4 is a great phone if you want iOS 5 but you're on a budget - and nobody will even know you're not using the latest design (at least for a year.)
You're right. I thought I had heard the 3GS wasn't supported, but it clearly is. I guess I should have known they wouldn't do that to a product they're still selling.
My sense however has been that the performance of the iPhone 3GS does affect some apps.
I really think the success of 4S is due to 2 things:
1. Many iPhone 3G/3GS users never upgraded to 4. This is their chance.
2. iOS5 has many compelling features. Us techies forget that the average joe doesn't really understand upgrades, versioning, etc. Phones are sold as both a hardware and software solution and so many of the iOS5 features are inherently see as being a feature of 4S and not just a feature of any iOS device.
Many of the tech blogs are looking at a technology aspect (RAM oh my!) and not towards how the common man thinks and acts.
Analysts should understand that most 3GS users didn't upgrade though. Most people don't replace a bit of hardware costing several hundred dollars / pounds (plus associated contract costs potentially) after 12 months.
The same will be true of the Samsung Galaxy S2 - those users won't be queuing up to replace it after 12 months (or if they are it's a bad sign rather than a good one).
You're not wrong about it as a factor, just saying that analysts should get this and figure it in.
3GS users have waited more than 12 months. I haven't upgraded yet, but that's because I wanted to wait for the lines to die before I decided on what I wanted to get.
The 4S is looking mighty tempting though, and I was going to get it unlocked. (Because I hate being locked to three year contracts, stupid Canada.)
I did what you are contemplating - got an unlocked 4S after having my 3GS for 2 1/2 years.
You won't be disappointed, the 4S is so much faster at everything. And Siri is amazing. The only downside is that I have started looking for the 'Siri button' on my iMac.
Well that's all well and good, I'm just worried that they're going to release another new fancy phone next year and I won't be able to afford getting it (which I will want to.)
You may be correct as I think I saw an informal survey of iPhone 4S buyers that stated only a small percentage were upgrading.
However, iPhone 3GS users for the most part have had the phone 24 to 12 months, and if you are eligible for an upgrade with AT&T, it seems you pay the iphone subsidy each month (by my estimates, around $50 per month) regardless of whether you upgrade or not. So it makes sense to upgrade and sell the new phone on ebay if you want to keep your 3GS.
Can I ask about your estimate of $50 a month? I've always estimated about $20 (T-mobile's old discount) which made sense given that a $400 discount over 24 months would be about 17 a month.
The ATT iPhone costs I think 80$ a month. If you get a Virgin Mobile phone with the same plan, it costs 35$ per month. And the Virgin Mobile plan is a little better.
I was also basing this off of the Sprint iPhone costing roughly the same as the ATT iPhone, and Virgin Mobile supposedly using the Sprint network.
Just to be clear, your hypothesis for why the 4S is successful is that Apple nailed all the attributes of a smart phone product line that get users to pay for regular upgrades. :)
While i am half techie at my core, i upgraded for the very reasons you cite. I'm a former 3G owner, and i was getting really fed up with how slow it was, not to mention no iOS5 support. It was time to upgrade so for me the 4s was the preferable upgrade path.
Not too happy with myself for giving in to standing 2 hours in line though. I should have at least waited a day or two.
I took a quick jaunt to the closest apple store to me (Mall of America), and the wait was nonexistent. They apparently had every employee in the store at the time, it literally was about 50/50 apple employees/customers. My friend in Boston had the same experience picking hers up. But apparently there the black 4s's were gone.
Most Apple stores around us ran out of stock within approx 4 hours. I couldnt get to the mall till after lunch anyhow and since i cant afford to by a phone outright i went to a telecom operator. They're the only one that had stock on launch date. The operators were on a pre-order policy.
My 3GS started acting up just days before the 4S launch, so I lined up at 4:30am to ensure I got a 4S.
I was amazed at the lack of 3GS phones in the line. So many people with 4s upgrading. Also many people buying 2 each, perhaps because in Canada you can buy them unlocked.
The iPhone 4S appears to be outselling the iPhone 4, which was a ground-up redesign of the iPhone, and (IIRC) Apple's most successful product introduction ever.
They could sell 50 million phones and you'd still be able to write this comment. "How much more than 50MM phones would they have sold with a different form factor?"
These sales numbers do in fact make the analysts look stupid.
>The iPhone 4S appears to be outselling the iPhone 4, which was a ground-up redesign of the iPhone, and (IIRC) Apple's most successful product introduction ever.
The market is definitely bigger, not to mention Verizon and Sprint getting the iPhone, so the number aren't directly comparable.
>They could sell 50 million phones and you'd still be able to write this comment. "How much more than 50MM phones would they have sold with a different form factor?"
And that question would still be valid.
I was basing my question on my personal experience that many of my friends with a 3GS immediately jumped on the iPhone 4 regardless of contracts, but aren't that interested into moving to the 4S. I know that's just an anecdote, maybe others can share theirs.
>These sales numbers do in fact make the analysts look stupid.
Maybe I missed some of the articles, but the ones I read stated that the release was somewhat disappointing but the phone will still sell a lot. Apple has built a reputation for suddenly unveiling groundbreaking design and hardware and this lead to people expecting(wrongly or rightly) them to repeat it.
If you think it's reasonable to wonder whether an even better case design might allow Apple to sell more than fifty million phones in one week, there's not much room for productive conversation between you & I.
Why is it an unreasonable question? Won't a LOT of iPhone 4 users upgrade to a new design rather than a 4S? There are tens of millions of iPhone 4 users.
"In the first month of general availability, sales of Vista exceeded 20 million licenses, which is more than double the initial pace of sales for XP, which sold 17 million units in the first two months following its August 2001 release."
And Vista, unlike the 4s, isn't strictly superior to its predecessor.
The 'S' models is a clever idea; allow late adopters to catch up, provide a sight boost to the spec to keep the phone competitive.
People who upgrade late, need to feel like they're upgrading to a phone that's competitive with other new releases .. the iPhone 4S provides that feeling. I don't think it's revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination.
To quote myself from another post on this page "The missed expectations were held by fanboy contributors to MacRumors and the equally witless anti-fanboys (fandroids for the most part) who chimed in with "Ha! No new case after 18 months? Lame! Fail!""
one thing that the press doesn't understand (but apple does, especially with its CEO being one of the best operations guys) is that ramping up production takes time. using the same design helps meet the demand for the iphone 4S—they've been doing the CDMA iphone 4 for almost a year now.
as for the rumors, i think that they are real devices—i actually expected a 3G ipod touch with a bigger screen—but maybe it is a possible design for the iphone 5. because we don't see the lead times from apple like we see from other electronics companies doesn't mean they aren't there. the retina display ipad 2, the iphone 5, these things surely exist in some capacity as they figure out not just how to make them, but how to make enough of them to meet demand. i think apple is finding it much more difficult to keep new devices secret and because of the short time between announcement and delivery with increased production ramp-ups and internal lead times, apple seems to be experiencing and anti-osbourne effect—the rumors of the device after the next device surfacing and disappointing all of those who have come to expect so much from apple.
Being a 3GS owner, I feel like an ugly stepchild.
Should I upgrade to 4S, and then watch (once again, as in the case of iphone 4) as the iphone 5 rolls out early next year? If the i5 comes out in Feb, it might be worth the wait. If June... I'm not so sure.
iOS4 and iOS4-compatible apps run very slow on my 3G, even with Spotlight turned off. Apps crash all the time including Safari. I've lost calls because of the phone bogging down at various times. That's just the top of my list.
Is it jailbroken? I have a 3G as well. Upgrading to 4.2.1 I enabled the multitasking switch but it made the phone unusable and unstable. Disabling multitasking got the phone back on track (I did lose Airprint). But the phone only occasionally bogs down and never drops a call (I know, hard to believe for an iPhone).
Agreed. This is their best selling device yet. Apple isn't one to sit on its laurels, but why would they replace a flagship* product just 5 months after its introduction?
*(ignore that PPC iMac released before the Intel switch)
Change perspective: You get the faster iPhone 4 with all its kinks worked out. And the next time you upgrade you get the faster iPhone 5 with all its kinks worked out.
I've just replaced a 3GS with a 4S as I saw it as a major upgrade.
You're getting a massively improved camera (including flash, increased resolution, HD video, HDR), front facing camera, retina display, improved processor, SIRI, new form factor, iOS5 running at an acceptable speed (it's a dog on the 3GS), potentially greater capacity if you go for the 64Gb.
The fact it's not a major change from the 4 in some regards surely isn't a factor for those of us with 3GSs as we never had the 4? It's certainly a major change from the 3GS.
I upgraded from the 3GS. The difference in processing speed is very noticeable. I used to have some apps lag the keyboard input because they were taxing the processor. Updating apps took awhile, and some opened slow. All that goes away thanks to more speed and dual-core; it is almost worth it just for that.
Unless you spend the extra money to buy a new phone every year, you're going to have to watch as your new shiny gets one-upped by something better either way, so you might as well go for something better now.
This is true, but they make up for it with a $30/mo plan that includes 100 minutes of talk and unlimited text and data. There's a $50/mo plan that includes unlimited everything. Personally, that's a trade-off I'm happy to make.
I can't find either of these plans on their website. I went to buy a Micro SIM card, and the only unlimited everything plan is 105$ a month. There is no 100 minute plan or 30$ plan that I can find.
The $30 plan is only available at Walmart, even though it's still through T-Mobile. The $50/mo plan gives you unlimited everything, but requires going to a T-Mobile location to ask for it.
Don't forget about the used market. There's a slew of people selling their iPhone 4 to upgrade to the 4S, and people are still buying the 3GS. If you really need to upgrade, but don't care if you're getting the latest and greatest, it looks like you can sell your 3GS for $200 and buy a 4 for $400 right now. If you're going to use it on Tmo's pre-paid, just make sure the new phone has an unlockable baseband.
I'm doing the 4S and not worried at all about a 5 early next year (and i do believe it is eminently possible). I actually thought long and hard about upgrading at all.
If the 5 comes, there are still so many4 and 4S (and 3GS) phones in the market, apps are still going to work really well on it for a long time.
I do much less on my phone now that I have my iPad.
The camera, one of the major reasons for the upgrade, is unlikely to get much better on the 5.
If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll sale it jail broken (or pass it down to one of my kids in the family plan :). But I would be greatly surprised if a nee one shows up before next fall. I think Apple is OK with moving the iPhones to the holiday release schedule.
This is not about the general public being utterly amazed with the iPhone 4S.
This is what happens when there is an 18 month period between product refreshes of a popular phone. It turns out that several million people have been holding out for "the next iPhone" for the last several months. Is this surprising anyone?
Seems like a statement in need of support. Certainly that's a factor, but it seems like a ton of people [including non-Apple-geeks] are interested in and talking about the phone (especially Siri but also the camera) and saying they're "utterly amazed".
If the previous statement is in need of support, surely you have a cite for that ton of non-Apple-geeks saying they're "utterly amazed" by Siri and the camera, right?
Of course I don't have a formal citation, but I was only countering the earlier poster's firm pronouncement of why they had sold so many with a note that his/her statement was just conjecture. As I said, certainly that conjecture plays some part, but it doesn't seem valid to me to state that it's "the reason" for these sales in opposition to other reasons that customers (on Twitter, Facebook, the nightly news, etc) are (yes, anecdotally) giving.
People are talking more about Siri since the release date (on average) and for more dramatic effect, look at the results over a 30 day timeframe - not bad considering that Siri is essentially 2 year old technology.
Yeah, people are impressed by Siri, even if they just want to make fun of it (in Australia we call that Tall Poppy Syndrome)
The biggest factor here is that this is the first U.S. iPhone launch on multiple carriers. That's more than double the addressable market, and I'd imagine that the effect on purchasing decisions goes well beyond that. In short, forcing users on one carrier made the iPhone something of a niche product, but now it's mainstream.
It seems like the "Apple is going bankrupt" stories have finally disappeared. Looking back I wonder when that happened. Now we're down to "Apple's new iPhone might not sell quite as fast as some other guy thinks it will".
131 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] threadI wonder if Steve Jobs being dead actually is a reason for increased sales. It could be like a singer dying and people buy more of his records.
On the other hand it might be just that many people held back buying the iphone 4 and waited for the next one.
[1]http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/228095/20111010/iphone-4s-fo... [2]http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/articles/228902/20111011/iph...
Perhaps the buyers were at the end of a contract, or looking to upgrade, or simply saw the best phone on the market.
iOS devices have continually seen 100% year-over-year growth so it's not really a surprise, especially when they're available on more carriers.
I was on a dumbphone contract on verizon and waited on the iphone 4 until the 4s was released. Personally I wanted an iphone and would have bought on any form factor they released
And it's a damn good phone.
In a thread that otherwise feels like a chatroom, what made the comment particularly unacceptable?
Sadly, this is becoming more common on HN. Have seen this in the evolution of /., before it got completely overrun.
When a band breaks up or a musician dies, the run on music is to the tune of 9.99, and usually less because they sell them as loss leaders.
At least from personal experience, most Apple Retail Stores didn't seem to exhaust their supply on Friday the 14th. So having more units on hand (and the usual second round of deliveries on Saturday), plus the pre-order records contributed to breaking this record. Simply having the product available was probably the biggest factor, though pre-orders (confirmation tomorrow) do indicate that demand may have increased over the iPhone 4, although some of that that could be seasonal demand.
I'm not sure on carrier counts (iPhone 4 not known, iPhone 4S launched on 22 carriers). In the US, the iPhone 4 only launched on one carrier, whereas the 4S launched on three. That's also going to be a significant contributing factor in increasing its effective availability to buyers.
With the 4S, we have a hundred of the damn things sitting on our shelves. If it's a similar thing in other countries, then that's probably a large part of why (vodafoneAU staff here).
Anyone care to throw some more Android or other device numbers into the mix? Blackberry numbers might be a fun comparison to see, for instance.
The best Android phone but nowhere near consensus as best phone. The iphone 4 probably sold 10 million just in this past quarter, it's 5th on the market.
"It's the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period." http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/28/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-revie...
"Samsung Galaxy S2 (or S II) is arguably the best smartphone currently in the market." http://www.androidauthority.com/top-5-android-smartphones-ch...
Maybe "heralded by some" would have been a better choice of words. The point was that people seem to love that phone, and the 4S, which some have called a disappointment, has already reached 40% of the Galaxy S II's sales numbers within just days of being released.
Increases in non-US availability notwithstanding, the 2.5x increase in US availability is close to the 2.3x increase in sales. I would expect AT&T sales to be down from the iPhone 4 and Verizon/Sprint to be up.
Sprint likely offered early upgrades to most customers who want an iPhone in order to keep them from going to Verizon or AT&T. There's probably a lot of pent up demand on Verizon from users who skipped the mid-cycle CDMA iPhone 4 in hopes of a newer iPhone a few months later. On the flip side, AT&T has been a lot stricter about early upgrades this year, leaving many who spend less than $100/month without a full subsidy until November. This is different from their past policy, where early adopter of the previous-gen iPhone users were granted early upgrades.
Microsoft's Kinect currently holds the record for Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device. It sold 8 million in the first 60 days at a rate of about 134,000/day
[Edit: source http://community.guinnessworldrecords.com/_Kinect-Confirmed-...]
And assuming they're evenly split between 16GB and 32GB (it's not, there's also 64GB models in the mix), it's over a billion dollars in revenue before carrier subsidies.
And considering that Apple doesn't care about the subsidies (they get paid up front), it's a whole lot of revenue.
At that number, we're a little over $2.5 billion. Staggering.
This usually brings in lots of new people, but some are starting to get confused as both Timmy and Jimmy are selling so many different brands of lemonade.
Now Lisa moves into the block. She spends some time in her garage trying different lemonade flavors until she finds one she really likes herself. Then she goes out on the street to sell the lemonade.
People really like Lisa's lemonade. Its taste is distinctly different from Timmy's and Jimmy's. People start telling their friends about Lisa's lemonade! Soon people from the other block are starting to take the two minute bicycle ride just to get Lisa's lemonade!
When Lisa after a few weeks introduces a slightly refined version of her new lemonade she sells as much lemonade in an afternoon as Timmy and Jimmy together sell in a month!
After a while Timmy and Jimmy get angry. One night Timmy sneaks over and steals some of Lisa's lemonade. He moves his stand right next to Lisa's and even put up a sign saying "Lisa's lemonade" on his stand. The next day he shows up wearing Lisa's clothes.
Some of the customers get confused and accidentally but Timmy's lemonade instead of Lisa's.
Lisa goes home and cries to mommy. The parents get together and decide to ban Timmy from selling lemonade out on the street.
How's that for context?
20 million iOS 5 users in 2 days is a very quick ramp up.
One wonders where Technology mags find all these seemingly countless analysts who deride every iPhone (or at least are unimpressed)...
But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.
The 3GS was already persuasive evidence of this pattern, though.
In a way, you could say the iPhone 4S is just an original iPhone with some spec upgrades.
No, I don't think everyone knows that. If we learned anything from the past few Apple product launches, it's that customers aren't shy about complaining even if they aren't completely sure what they're complaining about.
But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.
It is okay. The economics behind producing this many millions of a devices doesn't allow them to change the design every single year without jacking up the price. And for what?
A "tick tock" schedule, like the one Intel has adopted, makes tons of sense for Apple too. You just can't completely rethink a product design every year once it's matured.
And if you don't think they needed to change the design of the phone this time, just take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e...
No wonder nobody wanted to "copy" its design and build. It's so weak, even some plastic phones are more solid than it.
Similarly, you don't see other manufacturers producing phones that they intend to still thoroughly support in a couple years time, which is why there is so much fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.
I think this is a key thing in Apple's market strategy across the board - you're not just buying hardware that will be out of date in 6 months time, you're purchasing a utility which will be more or less current for a couple years to come (like what we've seen in Macs).
I think its a smart move. It builds trust with the user base.
See the Motorola Droid 2 and 3, and the HTC Wildfire S and Desire S. And Apple's own 3GS. Essentially the same physical design as their predecessors, but faster. Actually, Samsung is perhaps the only major phone manufacturer who _doesn't_ do this; most of their phones do change reasonably dramatically on every revision.
It really is kind of remarkable how subtle the changes have been with iOS and the iPhone. A front shot of an iPhone on its home screen would show nothing new to someone in 2007 using the first iPhone (aside from the resolution increase). But I'd argue that what seems like a liability to industry-watchers and tech enthusiasts is a profound strength for everyone else - consistency and familiarity trump novelty.
Edge/GPRS -> 3G data speeds is a massive improvement on it's own.
Why change the design of a product if that design still works? After all, how many radically different washing machine models have you seen in the last ten or fifteen years?
You mean like the 3GS? Or, in Android-land, the Droid 2, Droid 3, Atrix 2, HTC Desire/Wildfire S etc.? It's hardly that strange a thing to do. Keep the design for a year, make the device enormously faster. This is par for the course in computers, and becoming increasingly common on the mobile market.
What disappointed a lot of people is they expected a new iphone lite to compete with android at the bottom of the market.
When you think about it though, they sell a $700 phone as their main product, they aren't going to cannibalize it with a $150 phone. It's also likely they can't make a better new phone then the 3GS cheaper then the 3GS due to the scale they've built. So they're going to ride the 3GS to 30 and 40 million units a quarter.
Exactly. Why spend design resources and marketing resources on building a "low-end" phone when they already have proven (and popular) models that satisfy that demand? Presumably, they've also optimized the production lines, etc for those units to minimize costs and waste.
The $0 (w/ contract) iPhone 3GS is still a great phone for people who don't care about adding apps. (And if you're not already on an iPhone or Android at this point, you probably don't.
The $99 (w/ contract) iPhone 4 is a great phone if you want iOS 5 but you're on a budget - and nobody will even know you're not using the latest design (at least for a year.)
Or, er, even for people who do. Almost all iPhone apps work fine in the 3GS.
> The $99 (w/ contract) iPhone 4 is a great phone if you want iOS 5 but you're on a budget
You get iOS 5 with the 3GS. You may be thinking of the 3G (from 2008).
My sense however has been that the performance of the iPhone 3GS does affect some apps.
1. Many iPhone 3G/3GS users never upgraded to 4. This is their chance.
2. iOS5 has many compelling features. Us techies forget that the average joe doesn't really understand upgrades, versioning, etc. Phones are sold as both a hardware and software solution and so many of the iOS5 features are inherently see as being a feature of 4S and not just a feature of any iOS device.
Many of the tech blogs are looking at a technology aspect (RAM oh my!) and not towards how the common man thinks and acts.
The same will be true of the Samsung Galaxy S2 - those users won't be queuing up to replace it after 12 months (or if they are it's a bad sign rather than a good one).
You're not wrong about it as a factor, just saying that analysts should get this and figure it in.
The 4S is looking mighty tempting though, and I was going to get it unlocked. (Because I hate being locked to three year contracts, stupid Canada.)
You won't be disappointed, the 4S is so much faster at everything. And Siri is amazing. The only downside is that I have started looking for the 'Siri button' on my iMac.
Glad to hear that the upgrade is worth it though!
However, iPhone 3GS users for the most part have had the phone 24 to 12 months, and if you are eligible for an upgrade with AT&T, it seems you pay the iphone subsidy each month (by my estimates, around $50 per month) regardless of whether you upgrade or not. So it makes sense to upgrade and sell the new phone on ebay if you want to keep your 3GS.
I was also basing this off of the Sprint iPhone costing roughly the same as the ATT iPhone, and Virgin Mobile supposedly using the Sprint network.
Potential customers for iPhone 4 launch: 90 million (AT&T).
Potential customers for iPhone 4S launch: 240 million (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint).
> iPhone 4S is available today in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK
Not too happy with myself for giving in to standing 2 hours in line though. I should have at least waited a day or two.
So everyone was queuing here unfortunately.
I was amazed at the lack of 3GS phones in the line. So many people with 4s upgrading. Also many people buying 2 each, perhaps because in Canada you can buy them unlocked.
I wonder what were other locations were like?
If Apple had indeed made a new form factor, would the sales have been 4 million or do you think they would be more than that? How much more?
They could sell 50 million phones and you'd still be able to write this comment. "How much more than 50MM phones would they have sold with a different form factor?"
These sales numbers do in fact make the analysts look stupid.
The market is definitely bigger, not to mention Verizon and Sprint getting the iPhone, so the number aren't directly comparable.
>They could sell 50 million phones and you'd still be able to write this comment. "How much more than 50MM phones would they have sold with a different form factor?"
And that question would still be valid. I was basing my question on my personal experience that many of my friends with a 3GS immediately jumped on the iPhone 4 regardless of contracts, but aren't that interested into moving to the 4S. I know that's just an anecdote, maybe others can share theirs.
>These sales numbers do in fact make the analysts look stupid.
Maybe I missed some of the articles, but the ones I read stated that the release was somewhat disappointing but the phone will still sell a lot. Apple has built a reputation for suddenly unveiling groundbreaking design and hardware and this lead to people expecting(wrongly or rightly) them to repeat it.
Okay. Most people I know who had a 3GS still have a 3GS; some are thinking of getting a 4S to replace it. Very few replaced it with a 4.
I went from a 3G to a 4 myself.
I said, "I don't think it's inconsistent that this is a somewhat disappointing rev, yet will likely be their best-selling phone to date."
Lets look at this quote (http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/print.php/3668131):
"In the first month of general availability, sales of Vista exceeded 20 million licenses, which is more than double the initial pace of sales for XP, which sold 17 million units in the first two months following its August 2001 release."
And Vista, unlike the 4s, isn't strictly superior to its predecessor.
People who upgrade late, need to feel like they're upgrading to a phone that's competitive with other new releases .. the iPhone 4S provides that feeling. I don't think it's revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination.
To quote myself from another post on this page "The missed expectations were held by fanboy contributors to MacRumors and the equally witless anti-fanboys (fandroids for the most part) who chimed in with "Ha! No new case after 18 months? Lame! Fail!""
as for the rumors, i think that they are real devices—i actually expected a 3G ipod touch with a bigger screen—but maybe it is a possible design for the iphone 5. because we don't see the lead times from apple like we see from other electronics companies doesn't mean they aren't there. the retina display ipad 2, the iphone 5, these things surely exist in some capacity as they figure out not just how to make them, but how to make enough of them to meet demand. i think apple is finding it much more difficult to keep new devices secret and because of the short time between announcement and delivery with increased production ramp-ups and internal lead times, apple seems to be experiencing and anti-osbourne effect—the rumors of the device after the next device surfacing and disappointing all of those who have come to expect so much from apple.
First-world problems.... ;-)
What is wrong with the iphone 3G?
*(ignore that PPC iMac released before the Intel switch)
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
You're getting a massively improved camera (including flash, increased resolution, HD video, HDR), front facing camera, retina display, improved processor, SIRI, new form factor, iOS5 running at an acceptable speed (it's a dog on the 3GS), potentially greater capacity if you go for the 64Gb.
The fact it's not a major change from the 4 in some regards surely isn't a factor for those of us with 3GSs as we never had the 4? It's certainly a major change from the 3GS.
Use either the AT&T or T-Mobile prepaid plans. (You are pretty much guaranteed to save money over the cost of a two-year contract.)
Sell your 4S on Ebay after a year, and buy your new phone.
Voila. First-world problem solved. (This is what I'll be doing, anyways.)
Bonus: if AT&T or T-Mobile turn out to have bad reception in your apartment, you can effortlessly switch to the other carrier.
I'm confused. As I understand it, they are Monthly plans - you can get them online. I just did it two weeks ago:
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans
If the 5 comes, there are still so many4 and 4S (and 3GS) phones in the market, apps are still going to work really well on it for a long time.
I do much less on my phone now that I have my iPad.
The camera, one of the major reasons for the upgrade, is unlikely to get much better on the 5.
If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll sale it jail broken (or pass it down to one of my kids in the family plan :). But I would be greatly surprised if a nee one shows up before next fall. I think Apple is OK with moving the iPhones to the holiday release schedule.
This is what happens when there is an 18 month period between product refreshes of a popular phone. It turns out that several million people have been holding out for "the next iPhone" for the last several months. Is this surprising anyone?
or for something more visual
http://trendistic.indextank.com/siri
People are talking more about Siri since the release date (on average) and for more dramatic effect, look at the results over a 30 day timeframe - not bad considering that Siri is essentially 2 year old technology.
Yeah, people are impressed by Siri, even if they just want to make fun of it (in Australia we call that Tall Poppy Syndrome)