How many iPhones will Apple sell in 2009?

Many Asian countries have much more advanced networks that the US. We are left behind in the dust. Just go look how long Asia has had 3g for.

Chuck, you can’t compare the iPod Touch pricing to the iPhone pricing, the iPhone is much more expensive, although the consumer is not paying the higher price out of the box. The cell phone company, AT&T in the case of the US market, is subsidizing the purchase price and will recoop that subsidy over the life of the 2-year contract. This is what they do on all cell phones now. You can buy a new cell phone for $20 if you sign-up or extend your current contract for 2-years, or pay $200 without a contract. In the case of the iPhone, the cost if probably $599 but you will only pay $199 with a 2-year contract.

Longaapl–
Are you referring to the conference call in April or a later one? Do you have a link as I would like to review it to see if the semantics leave anything to question…thanks in advance…

“you will see that they shipped and booked orders in June…”

Actually, you don’t have to wait for the financials. Last analysts call, Apple made very clear they were NOT booking iPhone sales at all from the time they announced the 2.0 software in May until the 2.0 software ships. Feel free to look it up. This quarter was going to show zero iPhone sales for 1/2 of May and now all of June, regardless of when they ran out.

Posted By LongAAPL, San Francisco, CA : June 11, 2008 6:51

Steve, nice analysis on the cost structure of cell phone plans and how they make the iPhone MUCH more expensive than a Touch. But in your one sided musings, you assume that the Touch owner doesn’t own a cell phone at all. I don’t know many tech enthusiasts that spend hundreds on an Mp3 player but DON’T have a cell phone. So an iPhone buyer might in fact spend $1900 on the service and equipment, but a touch owner with a cell phone is probably paying close to the same ammount and certainly NOT $1600 less than the Iphone owner. Plus they have to carry 2 gadgets around and don’t have NEARLY the convenience that the iPhone offers.

Joop.
You’re also wrong about asian carriers not having the infrastructure to carry mobile web. I live in asia and i surf at 7.2mbps.

Yes, the Touch costs $100 more to buy on day one than the iPhone. But as many have pointed out, in two years the iPhone will cost around $1900 after AT&T bills you 24 times. So, if you don’t want the phone part, the Touch is about $1600 less.

Joop: As all the others have said, you’re wrong about this. Not only a maximum price of $199 for almost all countries, but in some places, iPhone will be even cheaper, down to free, such as in the UK when combined with the more expensive plans. So I’m not being America-centric. Apple has clearly gotten many agreements for this subsidized price of $199. Possibly this is the cause of the holdup with China’s carriers.

By the way, Apple is up to 79 countries - Malta, Croatia, Hungary, and Liechtenstein have also been announced.

Good point chuck. I supposed people would be willing to pay $100 more for a Touch because it’s skinnier than the Phone…..NOT!!

@Roman,
Don’t forget who started and dominated the smartphone market - Palm. And they opened their OS to whoever wanted to develop apps for it. Unfortunately even that OS was proprietary and didn’t have a massive group of sharp people constantly upgrading it.

Make no mistake, the mobile market will end up being HW differentiated with an open OS and a massive amount of great apps as a result.

Many examples of this over the years: VCRs, computers (note where Linux and Solaris is in market share), etc. Trying to build Rome yourself (no pun intended with your name!) only makes the competition stronger.

But will agree to pleasantly disagree. We’ll see where iPhone is in 1-2 years.

So let me get this straight the phone is 199 the touch is 299 (8 gig versions) the phone does every thing the touch does and then some. so why not have standard ipod features activated (on the iphone)out of the box
Then users can activate the phone features (phone gps and browser) later if they want to. Last I heard nothing works until the AT&T account is activated. Seems to me like apple customers that don’t want the phone part will be upset with less features costing more. I would hope there’s an adjustment to the ipods so they will cost less than the phones. AT&T may be picking up the tab on the difference but that doesn’t stop customers from seeing the bottom line if more (phone) can be sold for $199 then less (touch) can be too.

@Joop -

I like your reasoning, but you’re wrong on both matters.

Regarding Android, it’s a wonderful idea and all (have you seen the video where Sergey Brin presents it as an open platform for mobile rather like Linux was the open OS for PCs?) but in reality closed systems vastly take over open source. Take a look at the PC OS market: MSFT still has the stronghold with Windows, and Linux is peanuts compared to it, even with the vast improvements in usability. It took years *and* billions of dollars for AAPL to even start shaking off MSFT’s monopoly. With phones, there are more players now as it’s a new market, but it’s basically a race of who gets sooner to the finish line and becomes the Microsoft of smartphones - and no tiny shop using Android will keep up with AAPL, RIMM, Nokia… (I root for AAPL among the 3 but don’t mind a healthy competition). Keep in mind that AAPL is still the only company doing both the hardware and the software. The big question is, will the strategy pay out?

As for other countries - did you even watch the keynote? Steve Jobs personally told everyone that the maximum price for the phone around the world is going to be $200. That means they’re making carriers subsidize. Oh, and in an interview later that day he mentioned that they are working with China and hoping to have a deal by the end of the year. We all knew as much.

Correction:

Just checked the keynotes. SJ did actually said that in almost all countries the iPhone will be sold at maximum price of 199.

@Joop

SJ said in the keynotes that in MOST of the 20 countries that will get the iPhone in July it will be $199.

ex ped: My notes say he promised that it would be no more than $199 anywhere in the world. The keynote is online. Anybody have time to check?

Google’s “Android” is already becoming a non-event. You can’t talk something to death and then expect it to be a success down the road. You need to have a product while the hype is hot. Google is making the same mistakes Microsoft keeps making. Chasing after sectors that take attention and resources away from it’s core business. The end result being a shoddy core product. Take a good look at MSFT’s shareprice and see the future of Google. Without the dividend MSFT is a dead stock. Apple made a major mistake with not having the 3G inplace by 9Jun. Let’s hope the hype doesn’t wear off by the missfire July release date.

@joe,
You said: “With 70 countries and the 199 price, I’m projecting 15M from July to Dec. And I think China and S.Korea will be buying iPhones before the year is over”
Unfortunately I keep seeing this statement all over the Apple boards. The $199 price is AT&T ONLY, Apple has dropped the price slightly to the carriers, but ***it is up to the carriers*** as to what they want to subsidize the price down to. The iPhone has been a dud in EMEA so don’t look to the European carriers to bail out Apple’s low sales there. Asian carriers tend to provide low price SMS plans, but their data plans outside of texting indicate that their infrastructure isn’t yet built up to handle heavy mobile web traffic. I don’t see Asian carriers pulling an AT&T like subsidy.

Don’t be America centric in your thinking about Apple. It has a market share the size of a gnat’s nose outside of the USA.

One word: Android

It’s coming with a horde of developers ready to create very cool apps without the pain of having Steve Jobs’ thumb on their necks. Killer hardware from multiple vendors is making the iPhone look like a dog in comparison.

All in one proprietary solutions never make it in the mid-term, let alone long run. iPhone is going to be a splot in the middle of the road by Q1 ‘09.

In my opinion. Apple is smart even thought they are willing to loose the sales for a short term period they are getting so much free publicity of their products and they are smart enough to prebook orders for their phones which common customers are willing to give. So all in all they just shifting their sales from one month to another or just or their quarter.

Apple is confident that the delay isn’t going to cost them very much in sales, since most of those who want it will be willing to wait. I’m sure that the dearth of sales from May to early July will be more than made up for in late July and August.

With 70 countries and the 199 price, I’m projecting 15M from July to Dec. And I think China and S.Korea will be buying iPhones before the year is over…

David in Seattle is likely right that this is the cheap iPhone since Apple decided to stop offering the 2G iPhone. I’d also agree that a premium iPhone ($399/499) is coming over the next year, possibly with 2 cameras (at least 1 being 5MP), higher resolution display, solar recharging, etc. And the 199 iPhone will probably go down to 149 (subsidized) over the next year.

“you will see that they shipped and booked orders in June…”

Actually, you don’t have to wait for the financials. Last analysts call, Apple made very clear they were NOT booking iPhone sales at all from the time they announced the 2.0 software in May until the 2.0 software ships. Feel free to look it up. This quarter was going to show zero iPhone sales for 1/2 of May and now all of June, regardless of when they ran out.

Somebody said Apple shot itself in the foot. Had you stopped to consider that there were unforseen manufacturing problems or parts shortages that Apple had no control over. If there were a shortage of Infineon Gold chips how can that be helped. You ought to realize even the best of projects can go wrong. I believe even if there is a wait of 30 more days, pent-up demand will still drive iPhone sales. The logistics of rolling out the iPhone in all those countries must be staggering. A company such as Nokia has been doing it for years, but this is new for Apple.

Maybe those containers did have iPhones for the U.S., but there might not have been enough iPhones to supply all the other countries that are supposed to be rolled out simultaneously.

In the long run I don’t think it will really matter. I don’t believe potential buyers will run out and buy another company’s handset. They’ll just wait until they can buy an iPhone 3G. I just don’t like waiting 30 days for the stock to go up, but when it goes up, it should go up big time.

For it’s price and features, the iPhone 3G is a win-win handset. The HTC Touch Diamond and LG Vu are done for.

Yes !!! Now I remember the missing millions iPhones that these donkey Toni came out with !!!

What a retard !!

How many iphones will apple sell? Well, how many idiots are on the planet?

By end of this year, there will be thousands of new apps and some of which will turn out to be “killer apps” similar to that of emails,spreadsheet, word processors, web browsers etc. By then, iPhone will be the only platform that runs those apps because of its unique UI and turbo charged OS. I predict that people will start to buy iPhone just so they can run the killer apps! 25 mil is my number.

Two things to bear in mind for 2009 and beyond — Apple has made it very easy for developers to build, sell and distribute applications. Thousands will become available in short order and are an unknown factor for driving sales.

Also, the lower price makes room for more expensive models in the future — say, a $500 video-phone. There has been lots of speculation that they will release a cheaper, more limited version of the iPhone. Could be that this is it.

Volume for Apple and volume for AT&T are two very different things. Apple is a hardware manufacturer and is making money on hardware sales. AT&T needs subscribers. If you are right, and 65% of new iPhone sales replace old iPhones, that’s fine for Apple. I don’t think you are right though — I believe more iPhone sales will come from outside the U.S. than the first one ever did.

The $10 per month increase is for the 3G network. That’s the same for all smartphones on 3G not just Apple. 3G costs more because of the faster speed. Apple really makes over $400 per iPhone, $199 from the consumer and over $200 from AT&T and other carrier’s subsidy. Subsidies are made on all cellphones, not just on the iPhone, but is usually limited to around $200. Apple is going to make a lot of money with the new iPhone. The iPhone beats all other cellphones in features and cost.

Maybe Apple is going for volume, but AT&T isn’t on the same page.

With the wireless company upping the price of service by $10 a month and eliminating another $5 of text messaging, they have effectively raised the cost of ownership by $160.

65% of the new iphones will be sold to people who already own iphones. Anybody who thinks that Apple will double sales in the second year for the phone simply doesn’t know the market.

People with a normal cell phone are looking at a $1000 purchase when buying an iphone and contract. For most that would buy an awful decent flat screen TV or one heck of a lot of gas.

Why would you include Toni’s prediction? They have no credibility given her track record of poor predictions.

If my wife and I are any example, presales are going to go through the roof!

Assuming they’re available, I expect them to double the total number of phones sold by mid-August. That’ll be the first wave. Then the “cool” factor will come into play as people see what they can do.

I figure at least 20 million by the end of this year.

Lots of iPod Touch’s too, since they can run the same programs.

For Jay…bookmark this site comeback after earnings report…you will see that they shipped and booked orders in June…there are just too many customs and other logistics issues to cut it any closer…those phones are already here or on the water…plus I understand part of the issue was getting final approval from the FCC…

I bought one at Christmas and love it. Guess they don’t need my business because the ‘improvements’ for Gen 2 are simply not worth an upgrade for me. I wanted a new one, but won’t be buying. It doesn’t record audio or video, 16GB storage is still not enough… I’ll wait. I say adjust those numbers down

If I am a Chinese iPhone seller, I will buy all the iPhone 1.0 before iPhone 2.0 comes out. There is a gray period between China Mobil signs up iPhone– probably 3 months. Also China Mobil probably will not discount iPhone as AT&T did.

If it came right down to it, will the customer purchase a $199 phone with tiny buttons, confusing interface and blocky, uncool shape and color, or spend $199 on an iPhone?

Apple really should have done this the first time around, but I guess high prices for early adopters is the norm in any market.

As long as the service contract isn’t unrealistic, Apple should sell at least 10 million. Its only real flaw is that it is a rather large phone!

Apple appears to have shot itself in the foot with the July release of the 3G iPhone. The hype leading up to WWDC stalled sales, and now they still have another 30 days before retail sales start.

I estimate 6.5 million for 2H08 and 16 million for 2009. (I said it first here!)

And for those of you who think that those boxes reportedly being shipped to Apple last week were iPhones, you are sadly mistaken. Apple wouldn’t let stock sit that long under any circumstances. My guess is promotional materials for POS display.

Consider this…apple will most likely book sales in June before the quarter ends…most manufacturers invoice as soon as they ship and I guarantee the 1st 22 countries have already placed their orders…and shipping in most cases takes up to three weeks or longer unless they air freight…plus what was in the 188 containers that supposedly came from overseas to Apple…they are probably busy fulfilling stocking orders …wouldn’t you think?

Is Toni including the missing millions of iPhones he found in that warehouse in Hoboken a few months ago?? Wouldn’t want him to double-count and artificially inflate his numbers. Since he has been so monstrously wrong in the past, why would his predictions be included? Comic relief?