(Not even mentioning how much money Rogers would make if they really did offer a $20 (or whatever competitively priced) unlimited internet access package — have they never heard of volume pricing or economy of scale? 100 desperate corp Crackberry accounts @$200 is far, far less than thousands upon thousands of regular consumers @$20. Is everybody chasing the prosumer market but Rogers??)

/vent

Update: Unfortunately, Rogers’ new $20 Communication Value Pack is presently limited to just web browsing on cell phones with only those browsers authorized by Rogers for the plan. Browsing through other means, as well as use of email clients over the network, will continue to incur a 5 cents/kb charge.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/05/rogersunlimiteddataplananinroadforiphonein_canada.html

http://phonedifferent.com/2008/02/whythemissingiphonesreally.html

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/05/apple-store-is-down-16gb-iphone-imminent/

Sales booster?

I wonder if removing those restrictions would have resulted in even more sales for unlocked phones?

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/01/25/apple-more-on-the-missing-iphones/

I did see that. It’s good of course but if they really want to drive sales I think they’ll need a cheaper option (£20/£25 pcm, perhaps with a handset reduction too). Oh, and 3G, naturally.

Thanks. Sure is a big gap.

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Jan2008/5690.htm

Surur

Updated with your numbers, which seem more clearcut than mine.

Surur

Thanks again. A couple of small criticisms if I may. Firstly the final point seems to be plotted mid Feb rather than mid Jan.

Secondly:

I seem to have collected slightly different numbers:

[INDENT]Fiscal 2007 third quarter ended June 30, 2007

Quarterly sales: 270,000

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/07/25results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/22results.html

Fiscal 2007 fourth quarter ended September 29, 2007

Quarterly sales: 1,119,000

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/22results.html

Fiscal 2008 first quarter ended December 29, 2007

Quarterly sales: 2,315,000

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/01/22results.html

Cumulative sales:

End Q3 2007: 270,000 End Q4 2007: 1,389,000 End Q1 2008: 3,704,000[/INDENT]

I still think it’s hard to say how the discrepancy is accounted for, or to be more specific how it splits between unsold, unlocked and sold and activated in Europe. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray Co’s view is that the unlocked proportion has increased after unlocking got easier:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141951-c,iphone/article.html

Anyone have to hand the date when that was?

Pretty big gap between AT&T and Apple’s reported sales. Makes me wonder if the inventory is not lying in Europe.

Data

Day 2 270000 sold Day 69 price cut Day 73 1000000 sold Day 93 1119000 sold end Q4 Day 115 1400000 Q4 results reported Day 186 3435000 sold end Q1 Day 221 4000000 Q1 rsults reported

Surur

If you still have the data open somewhere, maybe could you change the # of days axis to dates? If not, I can do it easy quick too.

Care to add another line for the Apple sales numbers to emphasise the difference between those and US activations?

There we go. Using the available data:

After 2 days -146000 Activations. After 117 days -1120000 Activations. After 186 days – nearly 2000000 Activations.

Using elementary algebra-

From October 23 to December 31 = 69 days, 880 000 sales.

4 weeks of sales in December at double the rate of 5 weeks of sales in October and November =545600 sales in December and 545600 sales in October and November combined.

After 96 days – 917600 Activations After 156 days -1454400 Activations

Plotting this data on the graph, we see sales have been quite smooth at 8800 sales per day, with of course increased sales at Christmas.

Anyone want to check the working

Surur

Double sales are expected over the Christmas season, which means the period before Christmas must have been even worse. I’ll make a nice graph when I get home of all the US sales data we know.

Surur

• Journalism 2000s style

The part I quoted above is pretty clearcut though – the rate of activations decreased over the holiday season in USA, at a time when it should have reached all-time highs, and when unlocking the phone had become more difficult.

That’s rather at odds with what the AT&T CFO at the last conference call:

[INDENT]“We had very solid sales results in October and November and we had almost double sales in December,” said Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner, referring to iPhone sales on the company’s quarterly earnings call.[/INDENT]

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKWEN355220080124?rpc=44

That is interesting, and I have not heard any coherent argument against this yet.

Surur

heh. we do what we can. The 3rd problem, I think, is that Apple finds it in their interest to not fully disclose on what’s going on here, too.

Roughly drafted should be torn apart. I refuse to read that rag.

Surur

From your article, this paragraph is most telling:

In a note addressing the situation today, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi considers that question. He says that AT&T had previously said it had 1.1 million iPhone users as of October 23, indicating under 900,000 new activations in the last 69 days of the year. (He notes that Apple sold 3.7 million iPhones through December 29.) That is about 13,000 activations a day, or about half of Apple’s Q4 run rate of 25,400 a day.

Its rather amazing that iPhone activations would actually go down over the Christmas season. It indicated that initial sales were built-up demand to fanboys, and not an indication of demand from the general population, which is a lot lower. This further suggests that iPhone sales over the post-holiday season quarter will be even lower, maybe even half.

Surur

Some do, some don’t. Truth of the matter is none of the analysts know how many are unsold, how many are unlocked, nor how many have been sold in Europe. Here’s a relatively balanced summary:

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/01/24/apple-so-where-are-all-the-iphones/

Both the ‘lots unsold’ and the ‘lots unlocked’ scenarios have downsides for Apple, not so the ‘lots sold in Europe’ scenario.

If even half the online reports are true, there are tons of the things floating out in the unlocked wild. (Dubai probably has a million in a warehouse )

They’re selling them pre-unlocked here for an outrageous $899. I wonder what a legit-from-Apple unlocked GSM @ $999 would do on the open market…

Ah, see I sort of thought that… but I do think that Apple’s share price shouldn’t have tanked for it. IIRC there was some early drama around Treo sales that amounted to a similar issue and Palm finally figured out the proper language (sell through vs. sold, etc) to keep investors happy. I wonder if Apple’s just too new at this to understand how?

Many analysts say unsold inventory build-up, which may be why Apple’s share price tanked.