In Apple's earnings call today, it became a little more obvious why iPhone user disgust over AT&T's network has become so much more prevalent: because there are 700% more iPhones out there to complain about.
In addition to Apple's near record-breaking Mac sales last quarter, iPhone sales jumped an astronomical 736% over last year. In the third quarter in 2008, Apple sold 717,000 iPhones for a total of $419 million; this year it sold 5.2 million and pulled down $1.6 billion in total iPhone revenue.
Of course, much of the huge disparity in sales year over year can be attributed to the timing of the iPhone 3G and 3GS launches. In 2008, the iPhone 3G launched in the second week of July, after the third quarter had ended. This year, the iPhone 3Gs launched in the third week of June with eight days to sell before the quarter ended. At the end of the first weekend, over a million 3GS units sold.
But even more important to the sales explosion is the addition of the untold number of $99 iPhone 3G units that were made available on June 8th. Unfortunately, in today's earnings call, Neither COO Tim Cook nor CFO and Senior Vice President Peter Oppenheimer could comment on the exact iPhone sales mix for "competitive reasons."
What was repeated several times was the fact that Apple is having difficulty keeping up with the demand for the 3GS in the 18 countries where it's sold. The iPhone 3G, on the other hand, is available in 80 countries. Cook said the device will be shipping in the majority of those countries by the end of the year.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009