Apple Inc.’s initial iPhone sales might have beat analysts’ top projections, suggesting Chief Executive Steve Jobs will reach his goal of making mobile phones as profitable to the company as computers and the iPod.
Shoppers might have bought as many as 700,000 units over the weekend, Goldman Sachs Inc. analyst David Bailey said Monday, twice his projection of 350,000. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster pegged sales at about 500,000, more than twice his original 200,000 estimate.
More than a third of Apple’s 164 stores were out of stock by Sunday night, according to the company’s Web site, leaving buyers in states such as Hawaii, Nevada and Utah to try AT&T Inc. stores. AT&T, the exclusive provider of wireless service for the iPhone, said most of its 1,800 stores sold out within 24 hours.
“This is a very successfully handled launch,” said Munster, who has rated Apple’s shares “outperform” since June 2004. “The real sign of success would be what kind of legs this product has in 2008 and 2009. In 2009, we estimate a third of Apple’s sales will be from iPhone. This is a huge product.”
JPMorgan Securities Inc.’s Bill Shope said sales might have reached 312,000 since the iPhone went on sale Friday at 6 p.m. local time in every time zone in the United States. American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu, who called his initial 50,000 estimate conservative, said in a note Monday that Apple might have sold five times as many.
Mark Siegel, a spokesman for San Antonio-based AT&T, said, “Things have just gone extraordinarily well.” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling didn’t return a call seeking comment.
AT&T is still fixing problems for some customers who can’t activate their new phones, Siegel said Monday. Some business customers need approval from their companies’ communications departments to switch to personal subscriptions, he said. The “overwhelming majority” have activated the phone.
Siegel declined to say how many iPhones the company has sold or how many users switched to AT&T, the nation’s largest wireless service provider, from other providers. AT&T’s calling plans for the phone cost $60 to $220 a month.
The iPhone, which costs $499 and $599, sold online for a premium at eBay Inc. The device sold for an average price of $702, with the highest bid at $12,500, according to data from eBay.
There’s “nothing else quite like” the iPhone, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research in New York.
Customers are allowed one phone each at AT&T’s stores and two at Apple’s outlets. Shoppers can check Apple’s Web site to see if the iPhone is in stock at any of its stores. There’s a wait of two to four weeks for customers who order the phone online from Apple, according to the site.
Jobs has said he aims to sell 10 million of the phones in 2008. He expects consumers will buy 1 billion mobile phones next year, which would be almost four times the number of personal computers sold.
Shares of Apple fell 78 cents, to $121.26, on the Nasdaq stock market. Shares of AT&T added 35 cents, to $41.85, on the New York Stock Exchange.
