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iPhone Popularity On the Wane?

by Alon Avdi on January 25, 2008 at 06:03 PM



Apple recently said that it has sold about 3.7 million units of the iPhone, but phone service giant (and iPhone carrier) AT&T claims it only has approximately 2 million iPhone service subscribers. CNET News.com reports that the "missing" 1.7 million units may be accounted in several ways: For one, about 400,000 units have been sold in Europe. Another 250,000 that were sold, but not activated, are thought to have been purchased by consumers wanting to hack and unlock the phone, an endeavor that became much harder with the release of Apple's 1.1.2 firmware. The rest are apparently in-store inventory, waiting to be bought up by customers.

It is possible that hesitant consumers are waiting for a lower-priced iPhone, or that the superstitious are reluctant about buying brand new products that may still have kinks for the next version to work out. Apple nevertheless projects 2008 sales to number about 10 million units. CNET News suggests that launches in Asia and other European countries, soon-to-be-released new applications, and the release of the iPhone software developer's kit (which will lead to all kinds of cool third-party programs for the device) might all back up Apple's claim.

Or maybe people are just sick of the iPhone. It stopped being a novelty as soon as the iPod Touch came out last Fall, which gave all those users who didn't want to switch carriers the benefits of the iPhone's big, responsive touchscreen and slim form factor.

Besides, aren't we all waiting for the hot, new high-speed 3G iPhone to come out some time this year? Let's hope it really happens.

From CNET News.com

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Tags: Apple, breaking+news, iPhone, top

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