
iPhone 5 First Weekend Sales Top Five Million - derpenxyne
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/09/24iPhone-5-First-Weekend-Sales-Top-Five-Million.html
======
calinet6
Turns out people just wanted a more refined iPhone with 4G.

Who would have thought?

Seriously though, I remember naysayers about the iPod back when it was first
released, bemoaning the interface, design, and pointing out dozens of other
mp3 players with longer feature lists at better prices. Yet the iPod still won
out because it offered a consistent and predictable user experience, from the
purchase to the day-to-day use—looking at the quality of experience
_holistically_ and end-to-end, including fashion, features, and fun.

You could pick up any iPod and know how to use it, and that trend continued
throughout new releases and new iPods for years on end, with the only major
interface change being the shift to touch, which was (arguably) even easier to
use.

The tech crowd tends to look at devices as bricks with feature lists attached
to them, but consumers don't. And consumers are the ones who buy things and
use them, not just us. The iPhone 5 is exactly what people want with just
enough "new" to make them want it. It will be moderately successful for a
refresh, and most importantly, people will continue to enjoy using their
phones and will continue to want to upgrade in the future. Apple nailed it.

~~~
untog
I agree that the criticism of the iPhone 5 was overblown, but I don't think
these figures are a tremendous validation of the iPhone 5, either. The simple
fact is that the vast majority of people are on two year cellphone plans, and
it's been two years since the iPhone 4 came out. They took the upgrade in
front of them.

The iPhone 5 was good enough that people didn't want to switch to Android, but
that isn't the strongest compliment out there. IMO, Apple is simply
benefitting from no-one else doing anything very interesting. I'd like to
think that the Windows Phone devices from Nokia and HTC will change that, but
at this point it may be too late.

~~~
seiji
If five million devices sold in three days isn't impressive, what kinds of
numbers are you used to looking at?

A calculated decision to "stay on iOS" or "switch to android" is about the
6219th most important thing in most people's lives.

~~~
untog
Another user posted an article[1] where an analyst suggested 10 million, with
a "worst-case scenario" of 6 million. Obviously, no-one has any idea what
Apple's target/expectations were.

In any case, I didn't say that 5 million devices wasn't impressive. It is. But
it isn't necessarily evidence that the iPhone 5 is earth-shatteringly great,
it's just good enough for people to upgrade.

[1]
[http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5...](http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5-pre-
orders_1_iphone-4s-release-apple-stores-16gb)

------
kumarm
This is not a success by the expectations and hype created. Analysts projected
10Million sales and worst case scenario of 6Million sales before launch:
[http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5...](http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5-pre-
orders_1_iphone-4s-release-apple-stores-16gb)

~~~
jusben1369
The very first paragraph of your linked article reads: "Pre-order response to
the iPhone 5 has been massive, outstripping expectations of analysts, who were
bullish on Apple's latest smartphone to begin with, and apparently of Apple
itself."

How do I reconcile that with your comment here?

~~~
kumarm
The article is from 19th (Before iPhone was released) where analysts expecting
sales to be 10Million during weekend and 6 Million worst case scenario.

~~~
jusben1369
Ok. I think what has happened is a) Analysts had lower numbers. b) Analysts
blown away by initial numbers which leads to this opening paragraph, c)
Analysts raise numbers substantially to 6 - 10 million range as a result and
per your highlight d) You assume these last minute updated numbers are
expectations that have been set for a while and thus only inline with
expectations.

------
pja
20% more than the iPhone 4S managed. (iPhone 3GS: 1,000,000 orders, iPhone 4:
1.7 million, 4S: 4,000,000 sales (all first 3 days after release)) After
filtering out the inevitable Apple PR hyperbole, I can't work out whether this
is good (largest iPhone numbers ever in 3 days after release!) or bad
(terrible fall off in growth rate of 3-day iPhone sales after release!). Take
your pick :)

~~~
thomholwerda
Normalised by the number of countries it was available in, it didn't do any
better than the 4S (from @asymco).

<http://twitpic.com/axx0ki>

~~~
swighton
That's not a fair comparison. Its only fair if pre-orders are uniform across
countries. Adding a bunch of smaller countries with low volume would drag the
number way down.

A much more meaningful comparison would be pre-orders in a single major
market, e.g. the US.

------
OhArgh
"the world’s most advanced mobile operating system" I feel this needs to be
quantified. How is it more "advanced" than the latest version of Android?

~~~
seiji
Perfect scrolling, your applications can't spy on you, iTunes integration, and
you don't constantly need to play whack-an-app to preserve battery life.

~~~
w1ntermute
1\. Perfect scrolling? Not in my experience with the iPad 3 (woops, "The new
iPad").

2\. Have you seen the list of requested permissions when you install an
Android app? Not that there haven't been privacy issues with iOS.

3\. No iTunes integration sounds like an advantage to me.

4\. I get the feeling most Apple fanbois have never actually used an Android
device, because I have never had to close apps to save battery life. No one
has encouraged the use of task managers on Android in years.

And I don't see how an OS where you can't choose your browser or get built-in
reliable maps or public transit info can be called "advanced"

~~~
mitchty
I've used my friends cyanogen and non s3's, honestly Androids not bad. The
problem for me is the phones themselves. I have "girl hands" (size 7.5), I
can't do bigger phones and use them with one hand.

As for public transit info any developer can register their app to provide
that data. And to be honest I think its not that bad of an idea to let transit
providers update transit information rather than having Google try. (where I
am they don't even try that)

As for picking the browser, you're moving goal posts if you don't consider iOS
"advanced" for lacking it.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I can't do bigger phones and use them with one hand.

I can't personally relate to this issue, but yes, there is a lack of
(flagship) Android phones with smaller screen sizes. Like many other guys, I
actually need the larger screen size or I can't accurately hit the keys on the
virtual keyboard.

However, one interesting thing I've observed is that this trend is reversed in
Asia - the women (who are much more petite, including their hands, than
Western women) adore the Galaxy Note, which even I find to be way too big.
I've seen girls who can barely hold their Note with both hands.

> And to be honest I think its not that bad of an idea to let transit
> providers update transit information rather than having Google try.

This sounds like a double standard to me. People always praise Apple for its
tightly integrated software, but the one time it decides to leave something
core to the OS to 3rd party developers, it's a good idea?

I think you should try extensively using Google Maps on Android before making
this judgment. The value in being able to see the door-to-door journey
directions, along with the total time, distance, and cost of travel, is
nothing short of amazing. When living in a city that essentially runs on
public transit, like, NYC or Tokyo, I can tell you from personal experience
that access to Google Maps is truly transformational. Jumping between apps to
get public transit info simply does not compare.

> As for picking the browser, you're moving goal posts if you don't consider
> iOS "advanced" for lacking it.

Please elaborate, because I don't get your point. If it's that this contrasts
with my stance on maps, it's not that I want browser choice instead of a good
browser - I want both (just as with maps).

~~~
mitchty
On hand size, I only bring it up because I see far too many guys that seem to
be blind to the fact that a significant portion of the population has physical
characteristics that differ from their own. My hands are actually bigger than
most womens as well and they're still small relatively. I can't speak to the
asian market but the note is a mini tablet almost. If it weren't for me being
used to one hand texting I probably wouldn't care as much about the sizes. But
it is a rather big factor for myself personally.

I have used the google maps app on android actually, I'm hoping for google to
release it onto the apple app store (assuming it isn't rejected that is, and
until we have information on that i'm not going to discuss this aspect further
as its somewhat pointless).

The android 4.0 google maps is quite nice actually and it would be nice to
have both apple maps and google maps. I'm not arguing that apple's take is the
best way with their transit directions. Just that both have different
pros/cons and currently one con with googles transit methodology is they are
the gatekeeper to the updates. I'm not reading any further into that con
itself and noting that a local transit authority could release their own app
that updates time information on iOS 6 and fix this for their users. That to
me seems a bit of a better way to go about it. Yes I'm aware of googles
efforts to standardize transit data as well, in this case the fault is the
data providers not feeding their schedule information to google. But hopefully
with the approach apple took both sides can be fixed.

Lets be honest, this is the first version of apple maps, as such it is
somewhat inevitable it won't be complete. That said, developers have been
pointing out the same failings since beta1 was released. I think the
hullabaloo over its failings are somewhat premature. Yes it should be better,
but at this point its spilled milk.

> Please elaborate, because I don't get your point. If it's that this
> contrasts with my stance on maps, it's not that I want browser choice
> instead of a good browser - I want both (just as with maps).

My point was more that making the designation for "advanced" to include
features that your favorite OS includes but not another, you're being somewhat
disingenuous. This is regardless of what you want, but its hard to argue that
one missing feature that not everyone uses downgrades the entire OS to not
advanced. Now arguing about "most advanced" is fine as I would agree it
probably isn't, but this is after all marketing blurb as promotional material.
I doubt even apple would be arguing that this is any sort of absolute
statement that could be empirically proven. Maybe the marketing department
would but I tend to ignore such statements as hyperbole.

------
drharris
I love my iPhone 5, and think it's the most solid piece of electronics I've
ever owned. Almost hate to put the thing in a case. As good as it is, there's
a point everyone is overlooking when talking about the 5... the earpods. I've
tried over 20 sets of earbuds to fit my weird ears, and all of them cause pain
after half an hour or more of wear. I've been able to listen 4 hours straight
on these earpods with no ill effects, and they sound amazing. For me, this was
a definite value-add, and if the phone wasn't already enough to justify it,
the included earpods sell it for sure.

~~~
seiji
I think putting an iPhone in a case is like leaving a plastic cover on a
$3,000 couch. They are made to feel nice when your skin meets their design.
Life happens. Enjoy things that won't harm you without the rubberized
prophylaxis.

~~~
RegEx
Not all of us can afford for life to just "happen" and grab another iPhone.

~~~
r00fus
Get AppleCare+ then, it's $99 for 2 years of replacement coverage (3x). If you
can't afford life to happen to it, either don't get the phone, or get a
coverage plan and hedge your bets.

I don't put my 4S in a case, but I did get AppleCare+ (haven't had to use it).

------
barrynolan
And if you want to see what that looks like from a Fedex angle...
[http://www.cultofmac.com/192038/look-at-all-these-
iphone-5s-...](http://www.cultofmac.com/192038/look-at-all-these-
iphone-5s-flooding-fedexs-distribution-center-image/)

------
mtgx
It's actually worse than the _worst_ case scenario predicted by analysts:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-5-opening-weekend-
sale...](http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-5-opening-weekend-sales-
prediction-2012-9)

~~~
veemjeem
You mean analyst (singular). Only Gene Munster made that prediction. Gene also
thought Facebook would be the hottest stock... that's how accurate analysts
typically are.

------
glhaynes
IMO, far more interesting than the 5 million figure (because of supply
constraint, potential that that number excludes in-transit devices, etc) is
the _100 million_ iOS 6 upgrades that have been done. That's a _huge_ portion
of the devices that are capable of running it; and it's in the midst of
Mapsgate, the biggest reason people are mentioning for _not_ upgrading in
major-iOS-upgrade history.

------
bornhuetter
It's very difficult to take much from these numbers - you can't strip out
factors such as an increase or decrease in the number of people going for pre-
orders (potentially a big factor given how much Apple push the whole
announcement/pre-order thing)

I think first month sales are going to be a much better indicator of initial
demand, and it's going to take about 3 months before we get a clear picture.

------
neel8986
To these number in perspective the most successful android phone ever "Galaxy
S III" sold 20 million in 100 days!!!

Some people even said that Galaxy sIII is replacing iphone as the most coveted
smartphone

Now looking at these numbers it is clear that iphone 5 is oing to touch the
100 million mark well within 50 days about half the time taken my sIII

------
lwhi
No mention of Apple maps? Hmm ...

~~~
ubernostrum
Yeah, because what we really need at this point is yet another "LOL APPLE MAPS
RITE?" "I NO RITE" "SRSLY GUISE HAVE U HERD ABOUT APPLE MAPS" thread.

~~~
lwhi
In my opinion, it seems quite ridiculous to gloss over such a major failing,
with so much optimistic hyperbole.

Why isn't there a press release apologising to the people who've updated 'more
than 100 million devices' to iOS 6?

EDIT: It is a major failing.. To understand why, I suggest you search Google,
and see just how vocal that '1%' (!) is. Remember, a lot of people don't live
in the USA - and many of those who do are _still_ experiencing problems.

~~~
drharris
If it were truly a major failing, you'd see a press release. I haven't seen a
single problem with it over the southeastern US. I'd expect the only people
who know it's broken are those who have an issue nearby their house, or geeks
who read articles about people who do. The 99%? Oblivious and happy.

~~~
hahainternet
It made front page BBC news for a full day. It has major problems in such
unpopulated places as New York, London, Tokyo

