iPhone 3G Opening Weekend: 1M Phones, 10M Apps

by Eric March on July 14, 2008 at 8:33 pm

To say that Apple’s opening day weekend was a success would be an understatement of biblical proportions. According to a press release from Apple, despite huge activation issues, Apple still managed to unload a cool million iPhone 3Gs over three days. That’s about triple the number of first-generation iPhones Apple sold more than a year ago, and a feat that took them 74 days to acheive on the first go-round. Of course, there were 27 countries participating in the buying frenzy, so that’s to be expected, but it fits the average analyst prediction for where Apple’s numbers were going to land today. Some were ultra conservative, predicting a mere 250-350K, while the unbridled enthusiasm of others led to unrestrained prognostication of two and three mil. I expect however that if stores had much more stock, that number would be significantly higher — especially after hearing of all the people who were turned away because the store simply ran out.

Of even bigger success, going purely by the numbers, was the introduction of the App Store. Some 10,000,000 apps were downloaded opening weekend. There’s no information as to how many of those were the free apps, but Vegas wouldn’t give you odds if you bet on most of them, and I wouldn’t expect Apple to spill the beans until their next quarterly report.

All in all, I’d call the 3G and App Store launches an unqualified success. I’ve been saying it since the SDK announcement: It’s going to be an interesting summer.

(via Apple)

Posted in Apple Corporate, Gaming Related, Hardware Related, News Related, app store, iPhone 2.0, iPhone 3G