Apple Sells 9 Mil New iPhones Over Weekend, Stock Surges

[Steve Williams]

By Todd Spangler | Variety

Apple said it sold a record 9 million new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c smartphones in three days — and depleted its stock of the higher-end 5s models — with shares opening 6% higher Monday.
The company also said more than 200 million iOS devices have upgraded to iOS 7, which Apple claimed makes it fastest software upgrade in history.
Still, Apple’s stock is below levels prior to the announcement of the iPhone 5s and 5c. The stock closed at $506.17 per share on Sept. 9, and opened Monday at $496 per share.
Many Wall Street analysts had predicted iPhone sales would be around 6 million over the three-day weekend period. The stronger-than-expected showing for the debut of the iPhone 5s and 5c comes after Apple lost some $34 billion in market cap value from Sept. 10 to 11 following the announcement of the new iPhones, as investors were expecting cheaper phones for emerging markets like China and possibly a new product line like a TV.

Apple now expects revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter to be near the high end of its previous guidance of $34 billion to $37 billion, the company said in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Apple’s previous single-weekend record for iPhone sales was 5 million for the iPhone 5 last September.
Before the new iPhones went on sale at 8 a.m. Friday local time worldwide, long lines queued up at Apple Stores with particularly strong demand for the gold and “space grey” versions of the iPhone 5s. The 5s also features a new fingerprint reader that can unlock the phone.
“The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we’ve sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “We appreciate everyone’s patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone.”
The iPhone 5s comes in gold, silver and what Apple calls “space gray,” for list prices of $199 for the 16-gigabyte model, $299 for 32 GB and $399 for 64 GB, with a two-year wireless contract. The iPhone 5c comes in blue, green, pink, yellow and white, priced at $99 for the 16 GB model and $199 for 32 GB, also with a two-year plan.

 

[rblnr]

That 200 million # is unbelievable. Incredibly motivated base for a Co to have.

 

[ack]

Still long lines outside the Apple store here, as of 15 mins ago. See also this http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/a...reen-is-2-5-times-faster-than-android-devices

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You know, it would be easy to blame such poor performance on internal problems and the inability to innovate that Apple is facing in the wake of Jobs' death. The soul of the machine is gone, and the new guy just doesn't have the chops....

But that would be more of any excuse than a reason.

Only 200 million OS upgrades? New OS must suck pretty bad. It took them a full 3 days to sell just 6 million new phones? And the poor investors! Only a 6% gain. No it's not some existential internal identitiy crisis that's driving this dramatic, precipitous decline. It's pure unadulterated competition. Samsung is killing them.



Tim

 

[FrantzM]

You know, it would be easy to blame such poor performance on internal problems and the inability to innovate that Apple is facing in the wake of Jobs' death. The soul of the machine is gone, and the new guy just doesn't have the chops....

But that would be more of any excuse than a reason.

Only 200 million OS upgrades? New OS must suck pretty bad. It took them a full 3 days to sell just 6 million new phones? And the poor investors! Only a 6% gain. No it's not some existential internal identitiy crisis that's driving this dramatic, precipitous decline. It's pure unadulterated competition. Samsung is killing them.



Tim

If I were the competition , i would be real but real unhappy. This is beyond comprehension. The phones are nothing special but once it is Apple ... One can only shudder at what will happen if/when they come up with real innovation !!!
I am however an happy HTC One owner and I am not calling IOS people names

 

[amirm]

A bit about download rates.... When I was managing the Windows Media Player team, our download rate was around 5-7 per second! This amounts to run rate of 250 million/year (for 5 downloads) in circa 2005 (lot less Internet users than today). Sadly Windows Media Player is yesterday's news despite that kind of success at the time.

There is huge power in the prompt that asks if you want to upgrade. It is free. So why not?

On the total sales, Apple is certainly still on a roll. Steve Ballmer had a great saying: "creating another locomotive of growth is very hard." He would say that Microsoft had 2.5 locomotives: Windows and Office for full points and Xbox for half. He used to say that was better than Google which had only one: search. Google of course now has two: search and Android. Apple has had the iPod, iPhone and iPad. So to be fair and comparative, there should not expectations of additional killer product categories for a long time to come. So I guess the issue, if there is one, is that the impression the company leaves with us in its marketing and PR is that a lot more locomotives are coming...

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

If I were the competition , i would be real but real unhappy. This is beyond comprehension. The phones are nothing special but once it is Apple ... One can only shudder at what will happen if/when they come up with real innovation !!!
I am however an happy HTC One owner and I am not calling IOS people names

Yep. This is a minor release...well, the hardware is minor, the OS is major, and while I didn't like its look at first I'm already looking past that as I discover more of exactly the right things, right at my fingertips, better integration of key apps, faster response time....personally I wish they would make Siri devastatingly good, but it's not bad, and I use it a lot.

And this- major OS upgrade with minor hardware release - is not a bad move. They hand out a little hardware upgrade (which is going to look major with the new OS) - and to be fair it is not supposed to be -- with the other hand they drop another major chunk of integration and ease of use. The latter is the reason why "once its Apple" it seems to succeed even when it doesn't look like a big deal. Apple's strength is not being at the front of the hardware curve. It's the user experience; it always has been. Now maybe that advantage is just a memory. Mayb Android really is as easy to use as iOS. Maybe it integrates key apps from multiple developers as seamlessly as Apple has integrated their own. I've been told that's the case. But just last week 206 million people didn't buy it, so Android has some communication challenges ahead.

Tim

 

[ack]

Related to MSFT and product lines, they are launching Surface 2 - http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/surface-surface-pro-microsoft-tablets-kick/story?id=20337644 after a $900 write-down due to unsold inventory of Surface 1. Thoughts?

 

[Steve Williams]

Anyone using the name voice in Ios7 for Siri

 

[ack]

Anyone using the name voice in Ios7 for Siri

Not me. I've given up on Siri and Apple Maps. Here's my experience last Saturday:

ME: Bank of America locations near me
Siri: I found 15 Bank of America locations in Washington DC [I was on Washington St, somewhere near my house]. The first one is 287 miles away from you.
ME (dumbfounded and knowing one is on Walnut St nearby, I actually drive to it and am sitting right outside): Bank of America locations near me
Siri: I found 15 Bank of America locations in Washington DC

Speechless

 

[Steve Williams]

Siri is very good for most things but agree on maps and locations

 

[FrantzM]

Not me. I've given up on Siri and Apple Maps. Here's my experience last Saturday:

ME: Bank of America locations near me
Siri: I found 15 Bank of America locations in Washington DC [I was on Washington St, somewhere near my house]. The first one is 287 miles away from you.
ME (dumbfounded and knowing one is on Walnut St nearby, I actually drive to it and am sitting right outside): Bank of America locations near me
Siri: I found 15 Bank of America locations in Washington DC

Speechless

 

[amirm]

Related to MSFT and product lines, they are launching Surface 2 - http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/surface-surface-pro-microsoft-tablets-kick/story?id=20337644 after a $900 write-down due to unsold inventory of Surface 1. Thoughts?

I think they made a mistake carrying on with the ARM line. Intel Bay Trail which is fully windows/X86 compatible would have provided excellent performance (rivaling Apple A7). I read that the refresh was started 18 to 24 months ago so someone didn't have you know what to say, "let's cut our losses and run." This was done once before. Windows NT once ran on non-Intel processors but those branches were discontinued for the same reason. Staying on fully backward compatible path with current library of Windows app would have solidly protected them from what Apple is doing.

One can also question why they/we need the Pro version. Does a tablet really need to be faster than "95% of all PCs" out there? I don't think so. I much rather have a $500 fully Windows compatible tablet than debating if I want to spend $1000 for Pro model even if it ran slower.

Now you might say other people can make such tablets. The problem with that is they, unlike Microsoft itself, have to then pay for the Windows license and that can push up their prices making them less competitive.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I've had great luck with Apple maps and Siri lately. To the point that I've stopped using Google maps altogether.

It did find a bank location inside a gated retirment community and direct me to it the other day. I knew better, as my father used to live there and bank there and when it gave me that address, I knew it was sending me someplace I couldn't actually to my banking. But that was the closest location...

Tim

 

[amirm]

It did find a bank location inside a gated retirment community and direct me to it the other day. I knew better, as my father used to live there and bank there and when it gave me that address, I knew it was sending me someplace I couldn't actually to my banking. But that was the closest location...

Tim

Google maps did the same to me. The directions kept taking me to the empty parking lot of a hospital! I put it in three times and everytime it would take me there. Frustrated I downloaded the BofA app that shows their locations and it said it was just a cash machine! I went inside the hospital and after going from building to building I find the machine and get my cash. I then try to go back the same way I came and some of the doors would no longer open because it was after hours on the weekend . Had to walk all the way outside to get back to my car.

Computers are getting smart but they need to get better.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Google maps did the same to me. The directions kept taking me to the empty parking lot of a hospital! I put it in three times and everytime it would take me there. Frustrated I downloaded the BofA app that shows their locations and it said it was just a cash machine! I went inside the hospital and after going from building to building I find the machine and get my cash. I then try to go back the same way I came and some of the doors would no longer open because it was after hours on the weekend . Had to walk all the way outside to get back to my car.

Computers are getting smart but they need to get better.

They can't know what's not available. If our maps programs go search our bank's branch listings to direct us, and the bank hasn't differentiated between an actual branch and an ATM inside a hospital, there's not much the computer can do. They should offer an instant feedback loop. Like, push the Siri button, request "maps feedback" and say, the bank location you just gave me is inside a gated retirement community.

Then somebody fixes it.

That would be cool, but it's probably too human time-intensive.

Tim

 

[ack]

So while Apple sold 9mil devices over this past weekend, I ran into this interesting article about the MSFT phone http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/ballmer-admits-microsoft-whiffed-on-smartphones/

“I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,” Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. “That is the thing I regret the most.” (A video of the event is available here.)

Back in 2007, Ballmer famously denigrated the first-generation iPhone as an expensive toy that would fail to gain significant market share. He was forced to eat his words after the iPhone became a bestseller and ignited a huge market for touch-screen smartphones. Google subsequently plunged into that smartphone arena with Android, which was soon adopted by a variety of hardware manufacturers. While the iPhone (running iOS) and Android carved up the new market between them, Microsoft tried to come up with its own mobile strategy.

 

[amirm]

At the time that Microsoft was "not focused" on the phone, it had a 500+ person team with budgets exceeding $150 million! Unfortunately the management above them did not care so that is true of what Steve said. The division was constantly losing money so it was not of interest to anyone per-se. The group did not have a good reputation on top of that business results, translating into most "B" talent working there. They were in a dark corner of the company for years that way. The OS also had pretty high royalties since it was patterned after Windows. It had a touch version but for pen use, not finger.

The stage was therefore set perfectly for google who took the free Linux operating system (a better core than what was in Windows Phone at the time) and put some touch interfaces on the thing and priced it at zero. Major carriers like Verizon did not have iphone so put pressure on hardware companies to perform and Android was sitting pretty waiting to for this explosion of interest. Microsoft had no prayer of competing for all the reasons mentioned above.