Apple Sells One Million iPhones In 3 Days; Gray Market Still Thriving In Asia

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Dianne See Morrison

mocoNews.net
Monday, July 14, 2008; 3:00 PM

Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL) announced today that it has sold 1 million of its new 3G iPhones in the first three days since its debut on Friday. Apple chief Steve Jobs pointed out that it took the first iPhone 74 days to sell a million. The iPhone is currently on sale in 21 countries. Bloomberg reports that the sales figures are double than what analysts were predicting. Half of Apple's 187 U.S. stores were already sold out as of last night, while AT&T ( NYSE: T), its U.S. network partner, reported that nearly all of its 2,000 stores were out of the phones. A similar story for carriers in the UK, Germany, Canada and Japan, which reported their stores had run out of the iPhones. Gene Munster an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co had estimated that Apple would sell 425,000 iPhones in the first three days.

Apple is also reporting that its iPhone App Store has already seen over 10 million downloads since its launch late last week. There's no breakdown on how many of those apps were for free ones, or for ones that had to be paid for. The App Store has some 800 applications, with more than 200 offered for free, and 90 percent of them priced at less than $10.

Meanwhile, in Asia, it was business as usual for the iPhone gray market. AP reports that just as the 3G iPhone was being debuted on Friday, underground electronics markets across Asia were gearing up to sell the latest version, unlocked. In China, one shop owner said he'd taken iPhone orders from 40 people and expected his gray market shipment to arrive in a week. So much for the theory that allowing carriers to subsidize the iPhone would put a dent in the gray market. Some dealers said the unlocked 3G iPhone would sell for $700 and that the bulk of the illegal phones would come from the US and Hong Kong. Online auctions sites in China were already offering the gadget, with one seller asking $1400 for the 16 GB model.

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