Apple Sells Over 4 Million IPhones in Debut Weekend

Apple Sells Over 4 Million IPhones in Debut Weekend

Apple Inc. (AAPL) sold more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the first three days after it was introduced, setting a record as customers lined up at stores from Sydney to San Francisco to be first with the new touch- screen handset.

That’s more than double the 1.7 million iPhones sold by Cupertino, California-based Apple last year, during the introduction of the previous model. Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe predicted that Apple would sell as many as 4 million through the weekend.

Demand for the new device extends Apple’s lead as the top maker of smartphones as it fends off rivals including Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. that rely on Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android software. U.S. wireless partners Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. (T) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) reported high activation rates for the new iPhone, which has new voice-recognition software, a speedier processor and higher-quality camera.

In addition, more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, Apple’s new mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, the company said in a statement today. More than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud, a service for storing and accessing content over the Internet.

The iPhone 4S went on sale Oct. 14 in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the U.K., in Apple’s first hardware release since the Oct. 5 death of former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs. The company also has debuted iCloud, for wirelessly synchronizing music, pictures and documents across Apple devices, and iOS 5 mobile software.

Lines Worldwide
Customers lined up outside stores in cities including Frankfurt, Tokyo, San Francisco and New York. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was among the first to get a handset at the store in Los Gatos, California. With a two-year contract, the iPhone 4S costs $199, $299 or $399, depending on amount of memory.

The stock rose 86 cents to $422.86 at 9:34 a.m. New York time. Expectations for high sales helped push Apple’s shares up 3.3 percent to a record $422 in U.S. trading on Oct. 14. The shares have risen 31 percent this year before today.

Sales from this weekend won’t be included in Apple’s fourth-quarter results, due to be reported Oct. 18. In the period, profit jumped 62 percent to $6.98 billion on sales of $29.6 billion, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

For the quarter now underway, Apple may sell more than 25 million iPhones, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos.

source: bloomberg.com