Why the iPhone should tank

Apple didn't sell only 270,000 phones in the first 30 hours, because only 270,000 wanted the phone. The sold 270,000 phones in the first 30 hours, because that was all that was available. If you remember correctly the iPhone was sold out at every store during the first 30 hours. I am sure that if there 500,000 available to purchase at all the stores during the first 30 hours, then there would have been 500,000 phone sold, but there weren't that many available for purchase. I haven't seen anything that showed what Apple expected to sell in the first 30 hours, only what analysts heard/guessed, and I believe now that it was without any credit. There is no way Apple would expect sales of 500,000 phones when they know that they can't meet that demand in that short of a timeframe. Think about it!

Mike.. in your comment above you said that "jumping in bed with AT & T to take over the cell phone business" - is completely wrong. I believe Apple's goal was 10 million handsets annually (I may be wrong on the exact #)... which is only a small percentage of the total market. They will never dominate it - a great majority of people will still take the free phones with a contract. Even Steve Jobs has said they cell phone market is competitive and entrenched - not even he said they had plans to dominate.

#18

Mike, if by "I'm glad this encouraged such good discussion." you mean, I know this article sucked but I wanted to pull a Dvorak, then I agree with you 100%

I also think that the biggest risk Apple has taken lately is not launching the iPhone but moving from PowerPC to Intel platform. A problematic transition could have killed the company. If Apple never sold another iPhone again, the company would be doing quite well (did you see the quarterly earnings?)

I am happy to see many Tuaw readers calling the author out for this silly post.

BTW - don't get me wrong, I think TUAW is great (1st blog I check)

I don't see why it would be in Apple's best interest to let the iPhone continue to be bashed relentlessly by the haters out there. If Apple continues to sit on it's hands regarding updates and bug fixes, then iHaters will continue to have a field day with all of the flaws. Apple does not want bad publicity for any of it's products. That would be bad for investors, specifically. Apple has a duty to them to continue bringing in as much money as possible. Sitting back and letting profit trickle in because a product is "ok" isn't really doing that. I'm sure Apple would rather have profit gush in like a waterfall from a product that is "fucking incredible." They have a strong track record of trying to fix problems very quickly on any product. It is somewhat surprising to me that they haven't already issued an update fixing minor problems like copy and paste just remove that card from the iHater deck. The sooner Apple gets on the ball with this stuff, the sooner they can focus on developing other products to take over the world. Right now, they certainly have their hands full.

Some how I don't think Mike or this mysterious Doc mac have ever worked on software. It's not like you just wait around until you feel like the time is right then crank out a few lines of code. They have probably been working on an update sense before the iPhone even shipped.

Good sales means they are not likely to lower the price any time soon. People are obviously willing to buy the $600 phone, why would they charge less. But Apple knows very well that they are going to have to make these "free software updates" a reality if they are going to keep using it as a selling point, and stay one step ahead of the very competitive mobile phone market.

And that's just scratching the surface of why Doc Mac has made a ludicrous argument.

That was some pretty poor commentary. Apple's track record is one of pretty steady improvement, especially if we take the iPod's record as the benchmark. The product is like a month old and he wants more, like a child, yesterday.

The idea that failure will spur herculean development efforts to extend the feature set and will make Apple rethink the price point is so far off as to be parody.

I'm glad this encouraged such good discussion. I think you all make good points-- you're right that traditionally, Apple is not a company that sits back and collects checks when they've succeeded.

But just the same, this is a bigger risk than I think Apple has ever taken before. Making an mp3 player is one thing, but jumping in bed with AT&T to try and take over the cell phone business? They risked a lot on this, and so when they cite "customer satisfaction" as a reason for not changing things, that looks a lot like a bit of laurel sitting.

I don't for a second think that Apple won't drop a very nice software update to the iPhone that will answer a lot of naysayers, and fix a lot of problems. But I do think that if they don't meet that September goal (which I'm guessing they will anyway), they would be a little more inclined to get the update ready sooner rather than later.

Great idea! Maybe if they make the next-gen iMacs really bad, they'll lower the price on those too! How about a 12 pound macBook - that'd bring down the price. Using this logic, the only way to have consistently lower prices is to produce consistently disappointing products.

It is true that you cannot use voice calls and EDGE (or even 3G for that matter) at the same time. Most phones I've seen give priority to voice calls, meaning that your data transfer is temporarily suspended while you're yakking on the phone. I'm pretty sure the iPhone works the same way, tho I haven't yet had the opportunity to test this.

270,000 represents 1.5 days worth of sales. Extrapolate this number with the days remaining in the month for sales to occur and the result is phenomenal - far exceeding sales goals for the month. I am not naive enough to think that sales rates for the remainder of the month will match the first 30 hours of sales, but even considering a slow down in sales over the remaining month would still match or exceed Apple's expectations.