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back to article Apple: we've sold a lot of iPhone 4s

Can 1.7m punters be wrong? That's how many folk had snapped up Apple's iPhone 4 by close of play Saturday, 26 June - three days after the handset went on sale. CEO Steve Jobs apologised today "to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply". Maybe they were just queuing wrong, eh, Steve? …

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  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Of course

    1.7 million people can be wrong. Never underestimate humanity's ability to get things very very wrong indeed, PREFERABLY all at once, in large unthinking masses. Think of all the people who believe in <INSERT DEITY OTHER THAN PERSONAL CHOICE/ ANY DEITY AT ALL IF ATHEIST>.

    This is not an anti-Apple point I am making. Just stating the bleeding obvious.

    And of course, I might be wrong ;-)

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  2. Stu
    Alert

    Available to buy now...

    ...albeit with a 3 week lead time according to the Apple UK website.

    Others reckon it'll be a month depending upon where you go.

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    1. thorx
      Reply Icon

      instore stock

      does the online delivery date (3 weeks) reflect instore stock situation as well?

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  3. LuMan
    Flame

    Hey, Anti-Apple Brigade

    Is your blood boiling yet?? Despite your ongoing crusade to ridicule anyone who even considers buying an Apple product (normally based on something I can't comprehend) they've still shifted over one and a half million of them. Go on... Feel the anger!

    </sit back and wait for flames, thumbs down, etc.....>

    7 8
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      @LuSer

      On average, 13m sad twats watched the last series of X-factor each week. Your point was?

      The fact that 1.7m mugs dropped £500 on a phone that struggles to actually make phonecalls is more a matter of amusement than anything else.

      3 3
      1. LuMan
        Reply Icon
        Go

        @Shite Vomit

        My point? I think you just made it.

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    2. DrunkenMessiah
      Reply Icon
      Jobs Horns

      I'm all for choice

      And if it's your choice to own an iPhone then so be it. Personally I prefer something a little more open and flexible but that's not for everyone, clearly. I won't take a dig at someone for wanting an iPhone but I will reserve my right to take a dig at the iPhone/Apple/Mr Jobs whenever I like.

      3 1
    3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      as I stated

      I am not anti-Apple. It was just a knee-jerk response to the first line in the article. Had the rest been about buying sprouts/bicycles/ hovercrafts full of eels/whatever, the response would be much the same.

      Don't panic

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    4. BingBong
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Too true

      The interesting thing is that Apple don't actually hype their products themselves that much; apart from the usual product launch event and some pre-launch product reviews by friendly reviewers (timed to come out just after the launch event) and TV advertising, I cannot see what Apple do differently from most other big companies. Yet Apple get slammed for the use of hyperbolic type language ("revolutionary", "magical", etc) but what else do you expect from a marketing department??!

      The hype seems to come from the media and "fans" (both for and against Apple).

      I think Android will eventually dominate the smartphone market in pure numbers terms simply by the fact of the number of non-Apple handset manufacturers lining up to jump on that particular bandwagon and the competition in pricing; unlike the music player market where there was no obvious common "standard" alternative. Apple will remain a high-end niche market (no probs with that as long as they continue to evolve their product set) and I think RIM will shrink as businesses realize that there are cheaper alternatives to running your own "vendor lock-in" Blackberry Enterprise Servers and paying premiums for BB handsets.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Product quality and sales figure correlation.

    There is none.

    THERE IS a correlation between sales figures and marketing budgets however...

    Just because something sells or has lots of marketshare, does not automatically mean it's the best.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      @AC

      Nor does it mean it's automatically the worst.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        true, but...

        I agree. It doesn't automatically mean it's the worst. The fact that it's a mobile phone that can't get a signal if you pick it up does a great job of that on its own,

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  5. Gannon (J.) Dick
    Jobs Halo

    Queuing Wrong ?

    Pretty cold-blooded snipe, even by El Reg standards.

    The Steve 0.04% Solution

    Let's see ... 1.7 million phones for 4.5 billion people ... equals ... 0.04% People Blessed

    and 0.04% of 1.7 million phones held wrong ... equals ... 680 Ungrateful Whiners

    Sounds about right

    1 1
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    1.7M sheep are wrong

    1.7M who will buy any old rubbish, given the right marketing. and i'm sure they'll be a app for that.

    BAAAAAAAAA

    2 4
    1. Maliciously Crafted Packet
      Reply Icon

      Yeah well maybe...

      1.7M people don't want to be systems integrators just to get the basics of the latest Android offering working.

      Android may be ok for the geekheads but most people want a phone and not a fucking linux server rack to configure when they take it home and un-box the thing.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      @Obliviously

      Intersting, there's just one making sheep sounds - ironic, eh?!

      0 0
  7. Ed Cooper

    Signal Issue

    The signal issue does exist, but I believe it's more down to how phones are rigged to report signal strength.

    It seems you'll get four or five bars across a huge spectrum of signal strengths, it's been rigged this way for years as that's what the networks want. As soon as you get down to three or two bars things are getting pretty sketchy anyway.

    I'm sure when the Apple engineers were testing it the found;

    With no physical contact, or a case, antenna performance was better then iPhone 3.

    With typical physical contact antenna performance was on a par with iPhone 3.

    With full interference contact antenna performance is marginally* less than iPhone 3.

    Their conclusion, on balance, probably was to go with this design - typically it out performs iphone 3 and offers an innovative form-factor. Of course their conclusion did perhaps not allow consideration for mass hysteria relating to Apple products and every dweeb in the world with a twitter/blog deciding that they are an RF engineer.

    Anyone know why they didn't laminate the aluminium, would of thought you could make the problem go away - guess not very durable. Anyway I'm sure someone will be selling $3 kits which allow you to apply a laminate to the antenna soon.

    *marginally to be defined.

    I'm looking forward to the class action lawsuits by lefties.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    1.7m can't be wrong!

    Why, just look at approximately 50m England fans telling all and sundry that they have a good national football team!

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  9. dogged

    Makes you wonder

    how many Amstrad Emailers were shifted?

    0 0
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    More unfinished American crap.

    Apple like alot of American companies rush out unfinished rubbish onto the market, as early marketshare is more important than getting things working.They can plaster over the cracks of poor product quality, lousy manufacturing by spending big on marketing budgets.

    Clueless consumers of course fall hook line and sinker for this, and are more than happy to buy into the hype. The iphone is not a phone, it never had been, it's a fashion statement, however what many fail to grasp, is that every other 14yr chav now has one.iPhone is the new burberry.

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  11. Paul E

    By my calculations...

    Number of iPhones sold at peak release time over 3 days. 1.7m

    Android phones activated per day 160,000.

    Number of days it take to sell as many android phones, even with no current big release of an android model 10 - 11 days.

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  12. sam tapsell

    i'm a sheep

    I may be several hundred pounds poorer, but the new iphone is great. Happy things I have done: Videos are great, cycle GPS computer, Twitter app, Beautiful screen for surfing the internet.

    I think I understand why people are so "against" the iphone - they are trying to immunize themselves from an irrational phone purchase. Its a very nice device - but £500 is a lot of money.

    But If they sell out, then maybe the price is about right?

    1 0
    1. Arthur Jackson
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Old Shep

      The iPhone 4 is my first iPhone, I purchased it because I use my iPod touch on a daily basis and find that the Touch is an incredibly useful both as an entertainment device and a personal organiser.

      So I have replaced my trusty SE K800i and 2nd Generation Touch with the new iPhone.

      As someone in their sixties I find it both intuitive and a pleasure to use. The app store has yielded several gems, if I am in the pub drinking my Horlicks then "Nextbuses" tells me the nearest bus stop and the time the bus is due.

      The one app that as a keen amateur photographer made my jaw drop is "iTimelapse". Set the number of frames, resolution, time interval between frames, schedule the start time or choose sound activation and press start, or set it in manual and overlay the last frame over what is currently shown in the viewfinder. When it has finished you can render the frames into a time lapse movie, Claymation anyone?

      So for my £500 I have both a still and HD video camera, a time lapse intervalometer, GPS, SatNav, A-Z, PDA, games machine, document reader and phone, all in one device that is both practical and aesthetically pleasing ( to me YMMV) All that for £500 is IMO a bargain.

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  13. Jon 22
    FAIL

    Unfinished Crap!

    Which country was it that rushed out £1bn+ essentially unarmed destroyer?

    1 0
  14. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    I want an iPhone 4 ...

    ... because iOS 4 has made my iPhone 3G almost unusable because it's so slow.

    0 0
  15. gimbal
    Black Helicopters

    *How* did they arrive at that figure, again?

    I'm sorry, but the statistics of this strike me as being very hard to believe. Did they *actually* say 1.7m iPhone 4G units had been sold, in Apple stores or other retail outlets - or even online, let's say - sold to actual customers, by close of business, that day?

    Could we see what they actually said? *with* all of the original marketroid double-talk in it? so that we might gauge our own accuracy-meters against that, then?

    Thank you, kindly, sers.

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