Comments on: Does the iPhone Shortage Herald an Impending 3G Release? Probably Not

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:23:19 +0000

Man when did you say this sh!t: “The iPhone is simply the most incredible piece of consumer hardware I’ve ever touched. … The iPhone simply embarrasses my own expertise, which I am usually loath to admit.”

No wonder I’m hooked. Yo are a genius!!!

May you elaborate on this!

By: geeeze

geeeze — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:39:58 +0000

I think part of what is happening is we are seeing the transition from the early adopter to mass market penetration much sooner than many other technology products have in the past. The iPhone is still the must have gadget. How many of us know someone who is not technical who had to have an iPhone because someone showed them how easy it is to use. You simply hand anyone the phone and tell them if they feel lost hit the home button. They discover features they wouldn’t even try in the unfriendly interface on their current cell phone. The more people who get to the end of their contract “lock” the more mass market adoption we will see.

Switching to an iPhone is a lot easier than switching from Windows to the Mac OS. It’s not a complex product. Cell phones prior to the iPhone have been very difficult to use and challenging to enable even basic features. The iPhone changes that. How many of us have had 5 or more cell phones since our first phone? Can you recall one that you thought, “wow, this has an intuitive interface.” Imagine if you weren’t technical and had to use these devices.

TV vs. Internet trends suggest Americans are spending more time on the Internet than we are watching TV. Having access to that new “pastime,” wherever you are, 24/7 is addicting. How many times do you say to yourself, “I wish I could look that up right now.” Try that on any other portable device. Then try it on the iPhone. Our internet habits are advertising the iPhone to the masses. The supposed $400 million in free advertising Apple received when the iPhone was announced following 2 years of secrecy, pales by comparison to the power of the human mind to need that device. There are millions of people every day saying to themselves, I wish I had an iPhone so I could look that up. I predict 10 million phones will be sold before June 29th 2008.

By: mihomeagent

mihomeagent — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:35:01 +0000

Lemme just laugh at Beanie for his “Apple is probably channel-stuffing.” Hahahaha. Is “we’re out of stock” how a channel is stuffed?

By: stainedglasspoet

stainedglasspoet — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:29:16 +0000

@francini - Preventative measures by companies are no fun. Why create artificial scarcity? Hopefully, Apple will divorce their carrier deals and bring ‘legit’ iPhones to where the demand is.

@johnny apple - “Is anybody talking about the troublesome grey market for Zune or Kindle? Nope.” :trophy:

@beaner - it was Ratatouille, not Cars, that hit theaters June 29, 2007.

By: addicted44

addicted44 — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 03:13:43 +0000

I think it was interesting that I saw almost as many iphones in Bombay, India in my 3 weeks there over the holiday season as I did in Atlanta in the 3 months since!

The emerging markets absolutely love the iphone (and ipod). Apple better wake up to this fact and strike deals with providers in China, India and Russia.

By: francini

francini — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:16:02 +0000

So the question I have is this: what can Apple effectively do, that they’re not already doing, to prevent the product drain of iPhones out of the US?

I’ll probably get roundly criticized for this, but perhaps there should be some sort of proof-of-residence required to purchase one — that would perhaps take care of the casual tourists buying iPhones and shipping them to countries without deals in place between Apple and an in-country service provider.

By: David Stevenson

David Stevenson — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:24:38 +0000

One other possible factor of the discrepancy between Apple store supplies and partner store supplies: Apple has a history of selling iPods and may have figured the iPhone sales would show the same or similar drop as iPods after the holidays, whereas the partners only had sales data on cell phone seasonal sales rates.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:16:02 +0000

You guys are killing me. I really wanted to see the 2nd gen iPhone and have it 3G technology. I may just buy a Centro since they are so cheap, hen upgrade to the 2nd gen iPhone when it arrives and has the features that I require. Even my wife herd about the speculation, so I thought that it may be real. It’s disappointing news. Oh well, the old Treo 650 has a few miles on it. I will still wait a few months before getting the new Centro, just in case.

By: gus2000

gus2000 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:20:38 +0000

“Channel stuffing” is a method to fool investors by using inflated quarterly sales figures. It is unethical, detrimental to the company, and illegal.

There is no evidence that Apple has become obsessed with quarterly figures, nor has lied to investors for the purpose of artificially lifting the stock price. They do not need to stuff the channel with iPhones, because only the Apple naysayers care if the 10M iPhone sales target is met or not. Apple would happily announce that they sold 9.9M phones in 2008 rather than stuffing an additional 100,000 into the channel.

Microsoft stuffed the channel with XBoxes, but not with the intent of fooling investors; it was the customers they were trying to fool. Nothing succeeds like success, and they hoped that inflated sales figures would create additional demand, thereby nullifying the stuffiness of the channel. It was sensible of them to try, since the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy has been a Microsoft staple for the last decade. Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t work.

They did the reverse with Zune 2.0. By shipping a limited number initially, it created the illusion of great demand. I don’t know if that had the desired effect, but I don’t really care, since it has no impact on Apple sales.

It still bugs me slightly that 95% of the inventory of an Apple store is in the back stockroom. I’m so accustomed to seeing piles of boxes everywhere I shop that I keep thinking they must be out of everything. Pity…Apple packaging is actually quite attractive.

By: danieleran

danieleran — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:30:55 +0000

@ beanie: again, the percentages of web traffic you are trying to compare are not static. Each month’s “percentage” is not equal.

It’s no different than comparing iPod unit market share month over month. The individual percentages can’t really be compared because the overall market is changing every month.

In the case of web stats, it has even less to do with units sold, and far more to do with how much each of the users in the entire installed base of web browsers are using the Internet.

Comparing web stat percentages between platforms gives a rough guide of how much each device is actually being used, and whether that use it trending up (like the iPhone) or static (like Windows Mobile).

It does not provide a very good metric for estimating iPhone sales, because if everyone in Dec is on vacation, and everyone in Jan-Mar is hammering the web at work, even the same number of mobile devices would appear to drop as a percentage of overall web traffic.

iPhones are outnumbering WM by more than 2x, but Apple has only sold three full quarters of iPhones, at roughly the same or slightly more volume as all the WM phone makers in the US put together. However, Microsoft has been marketing WM phones since 2003, so Apple isn’t just beating the new WM phones, but whipping the entire installed base of Pocket IE devices.