Get Ready for all the “iPhone Fails” reports…


new-att-logo.jpgAt&t issued initial subscriber numbers for the first two days of iPhone sales with 146,000 registered activations…which were well below the estimated number of units sold, that analysts the world over pulled out of their rears.

We saw some analysts say that Apple and At&t sold as many as 500,000 + iPhones in the first two days….and you know what? That could be true. What we’re talking about here is the number of people that At&t managed to get activated. At&t activation problems were widespread, and reported everywhere. I saw first hand what happened on Friday evening. At&t’s activation service was completely down for hours.

The problem here is that analysts are going to be reporting that the iPhone has “failed” by comparing the actual activations and sales numbers to the ones that they flat out made up, based on their own “estimates”. Sometimes, I honestly don’t understand how it’s legal to be an analyst and just make crap up, then talk bad about a company when that thing you made up doesn’t happen.

The number of iPhones sold is going to greatly outnumber the number of iPhones that At&t was able to get activated in the first 48 hours, but those that are eager to see the iPhone fail are going to jump all over this….so expect to see quite a few headlines on MSN and Yahoo about how terrible the iPhone is doing.

Me…I’m going to wait and see how many iPhones they sold, and how many they activated in the first MONTH before I decide whether the iPhone is doing well or not…


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

8 Comments

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  1. What’s “Failes”? Perhaps you mean “Fails”?

    I’d love to be an analyst. You can pull estimates out of your nether regions, and when a company doesn’t meet them, you can pound them, and when a company exceeds them, you can praise them. There’s never any accountability for the analysts’ position, and as far as I can tell, none of them are specifically trained for their particular field, such as technology. All appear to be generic business folk.

  2. Or even looking at the first WEEK, vs the first weekend, as many activations from that week worked their way out in 4-6 days.

  3. Do you have spell check? Applegazette “failes” on this one. You should rethink labeling some else’s work as “crap!”

    Also, don’t criticize the analysts until you see Apple’s report tomorrow! In fact, at this point you’re making conjectures about their reporting. Your preemptive attack is a typical sign of an Apple apologist’s paranoia. Every report I’ve read has mentioned the issue of problems with activations.

  4. @PV

    Yeah, I have spell check, like any modern browser, but for some reason it never catches things in the title section of WordPress.

    And this is not a preemptive attack against anyone. Reuters is already claiming that the “iPhone disappoints”

    https://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/bs_nm/att_results_dc

    There is no “Apple apologist” working on this site. Read around a bit and you’ll quickly discover that. In fact, do a Google search and you’ll find where true “Apple apologists” have accused me of being a Microsoft plant and running a fake blog just to make Apple look bad because of the fact that I don’t apologize for the company when another product has the potential to be as good as (or better than) theirs.

    What bothers me, and what you can already begin seeing reported if you’ll look around, is that people are reporting this device as “disappointing” over less than two days worth of sales when At&t clearly had wide spread problems with the activation of customers. (not the “minimal” problems that the linked to report claims.)

    Analysts that simply make numbers up or estimate numbers with their best guesses are a plague. Not just on Apple products, but on pretty much any product ever. These guys pull numbers out of a hat based on small surveys (if we’re lucky!) and some companies live and die by this sort of thing.

    It’s a ridiculous way to analyze business.

  5. Frankly, this is a shockingly low number from AT&T and can not simply be attributed to their activation problems, which only accounted for about 2% of iPhone activations. Now, a lot of people bought two phones on that first night, etc.. but still… I expected to see sales of at least 400,000 for that Friday-Saturday period, but that now seems hard to believe with only 146,000 activations. I must admit I’m stunned by this, and can understand the reaction of the market and the press. This will make Apple’s report tomorrow very interesting. I’m still guessing Apple will report 400,000 units sold in that first day and a half, but I don’t know how to correlate that with these very low numbers from AT&T.

  6. Sounds fishy to me. I think will be pleased with the sales figures. It took 2 days for my activation to be completed as the porting process hit a snag. I have a feeling that this was pretty common. I bought my iphone last Saturday and there were hordes by the iphone display and two out of the three local stores were out during the week.