Comments on: AT&T reports initial iPhone subscriber numbers

AT&T said it signed up 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the first two days of selling the iPhone, but the true promise of the iPhone won't likely kick in until next year.

[Bill Hembree]

Lots of iPhones in 2 days

If the 146,000 number is actually only the new AT&T
subscribers, and the article's 40% new (hence 60% existing)
subscriber ratio is correct, the iPhone sales for the first two days
were a blowout.

These numbers yield 146,000/0.40 -> 365,000 iPhones sold
and activated in the first two days. Inevitably, this slightly
underreports the total sales since not everyone instantly
activated their new phones and AT&T had problems handling the
volume, causing very long activation delays for a reported 2% of
those trying to activate their phones.

This implies at least 370,000 iPhones sold in the first two days
with a likely high end around 400,000. No wonder AT&T stores
nationwide sold out almost instantly.

[mobiman]

only 146K total

of that 146K there were 40% new subs...
so .4*146K = 58,400 new subs ....

sorry..

[SteenMachine]

According to Bloomberg...

From ATT Transcript:

"As you know, on June 29th, we launched the iPhone with Apple and the results have been terrific. We had just a day and a half of iPhone sales and activations in the second quarter, but in that short time frame we had 146,000 activations, with over 40% of those being new customers."

This is a low number based on Street guesses, but this does not account for the activation problems, eBay scammers, or web-orders. I think ~200k for Apple is a reasonable number for the 2 days, based on the above.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Subtract the thousands on Ebay

Two days after the launch there were more than three thousand iPhones on eBay. Those aren't new customers, just profiteers. How many of those went unsold and returned for the restocking fee?

The real numbers will be a year from now.

[arluthier]

Next two years

The kicker for people moving to ATT and IPhone will happen over the next year to two years as existing non-ATT contracts expire. After the two year mark the market for new-ATT customers will probably equal out... but until then more and more will move.

I know I am locked in to a contract for another 9 mo... so I am stuck even if I WANTED to get the first gen. Maybe this contract I am in will save me from first-gen-itis.

[Lee in San Diego]

Come November

My Sprint contract expires a few months from now on November
4th. At that time I will seriously consider getting an AT&T service
bundle for landline, DSL (which I already have with them), family
wireless plan with two iPhones, and CATV. Furthermore, by then
Apple will probably have had some software/firmware updates.

[J.G.]

Remember slow authorizations

I'm not surprised that the number of completed AT&T sign ups was off some when considering the two days when there were the most problems are at issue. Surely, difficulty signing up or putting it off after hearing about the problems could explain a 10 percent of more loss for those days.

It will be interesting to see if the pace of completed sign ups picked up on subsequent days, still resulting in as many as 750,000 iPhone sign ups in a week to ten days.

[raulmot]

Activation hack!

Remember the activation hack also. These are sold iPhones that will count as sales for Apple, but will not show up in AT&T's activations figures. The activation hack I guess also impacts Apple from the perspective of the revenue sharing deal.