Very few iPhones actually activated

You know it’s bad when a company releases one set of data but won’t release another — more relevant — set. It was announced yesterday that AT&T had activated just 146,000 iPhones in the first two days of sales. The part they’re holding back — the very important part — is exactly how many were sold on those days. Industry speculation put the sales number at 500,000 for the first three days, but only the first two fell into the second quarter. Think about this: the most handsets were sold on the first day. So if they sold 500,000 units, you can figure that more than 1/3 were sold on Friday. So that means over 160,000 were sold that day — which is already more than the total number activated. A little over half activated? That can’t be good for business. This helps explain AT&T’s earnings announcement and subsequent lack of activity. They posted earnings increases of 61 percent over last year, and an overall 87% gain in quarterly revenue. Yet, their stock hasn’t bumped up much — it actually closed 35 cents down yesterday. Now, there’s a chance that 500,000 units were not sold, In fact, some analysts think it may be less than half that.

Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster called the number of activations a “disappointment.” He said he believed actual sales would come in at about 200,000 for the first weekend.

So is he predicting 200,000 based on the number of activations, or on some other evidence? We’re not sure, but we damn well want to know how many were actually sold. [LA Times]]]>