Apple to Sell Half a Million (500,000) iPhone 3G S’s this Weekend

by Jody Mitoma on June 18, 2009 at 5:11 pm

Apple is selling its new iPhone 3G S cellphone in eight countries tomorrow, and it is expected that they will sell 500,000 of them before the weekend is over, along-side sales of the $99 iPhone 3G model.

This is a forecast from Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster, who notes the half-million mark would compare to sales of 1 million iPhone 3G cellphone’s during its inaugural weekend last July, and 270,000 original iPhones back in June of 2007.

“Several factors lead us to believe Apple will sell less iPhone 3G S’s at launch than it did for the iPhone 3G including a less dramatic change in value proposition and fewer available countries at launch,” Munster wrote in a research note Thursday.

Gene Munster indicates that the launch of the iPhone 3G last year came alongside a 50% price reduction from the original iPhone model, which drove large increases in demand.

You must take into consideration that the iPhone 3G S is only launching in 8 countries, in comparison to the 21 countries that were able to launch the iPhone 3G its first weekend last year.

“The iPhone 3G S launch and the price reduction on the iPhone 3G leave us increasingly confident in our 5 million iPhone unit estimate for the June quarter,” the analyst told clients. “Our estimate includes 3.0 million iPhones in the month of June, approximately 500k 3G S units in the back half of the month and the remaining 2.5m iPhone 3G units through the entire month.”

I expect that Apple will sell more than 500,000 iPhone’s within the first week of sales. My expectations are approximately 700,000, if production lines are capable of keeping up, that is.

via Apple Insider

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