iPhone breaks Verizon sales record in 2 hours
It's a good day in Big Red's financial offices. As if burning through its pre-order stock in about 17 hours wasn't good enough, the company realized its best sales day ever in the first 120 minutes of the pre-sale. It's even more amazing considering that the record was set between 3 AM and 5 AM Eastern. That's a lot of users with bleary red eyes staring at the Buy button. Enough, in fact, to eclipse any single-day sales numbers for a single item that Verizon has previously enjoyed.
Verizon hasn't shared actual numbers, but we're comfortable with saying "more than ten."
Available to General Public on Feb.10
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – At 8:10 p.m. EST yesterday, Verizon Wireless ceased online orders of iPhone 4 to existing customers and ended the most successful first day sales in the history of the company.
"This was an exciting day," said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer for Verizon Wireless. "In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history. And, when you consider these initial orders were placed between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., it is an incredible success story. It is gratifying to know that our customers responded so enthusiastically to this exclusive offer --- designed to reward them for their loyalty.
"I am proud of our employees who worked tirelessly to strengthen and scale our systems, enabling unprecedented customer orders through our website. Overall, it was a very good day," he added.
Mead also said customers will have another opportunity at being among the nation's first to own an iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network.
"Yesterday's launch set the pace for next week when we open up sales to everyone across America."
The general market launch of the iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will occur on February 10. The company will open its more than 2000 Verizon Wireless Stores at 7 a.m. It will also be available at all Apple store locations, Best Buy, select Wal-Mart stores, and on-line at verizonwireless.com and apple.com.
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It's a good day in Big Red's financial offices. As if burning through its pre-order stock in about 17 hours wasn't good enough, the company...
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Wow... Verizon guy is FAT.
February 05 2011 at 2:47 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyPHAT, hombre, gordissimo...
February 07 2011 at 12:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replyitguy10
"As if burning through its pre-order stock in about 17 hours wasn't good enough, the company realized its best sales day ever in the first 120 minutes of the pre-sale."
The statement means that for all the phones EVER introduced by Verizon that the iPhone 4 broke ALL first day records in the first 2 hours in the middle of the night with sales limited to qualified Verizon customers. That seems pretty impressive to me.
If you take issue with that statement, your beef is with Verizon.
Not sure why you felt the need to raise the issue unless your message is....."but but my phone's pretty too".
Which many would also disagree with.
It will be interesting to see how Verizon's network holds up.
AT&T's network choked shortly after the original iPhone was released and it wasn't until AT&T started putting profit back into the network that things started to get better.
Networks prefer selling Android Smartphones because;
1) Android Users use less data than iPhone users.
2) most Android Users data is from Google's servers; iPhone data comes everywhere. It is more difficult to optimise networks for iPhone data.
3) Android Handsets provide better kickbacks from manufacturers in their race to the bottom of the market. Providers make more profit from an Android or WP7 device than an iPhone.
I think Verizon's 3G network will start to choke shortly after retail launch. With those profits being sucked up by the LTE rollout, quite a few Verizon iPhone customers may find themselves in the same boat as some AT&T iPhone customers.
Didn't most people expect that to happen anyways? It's been a few years in the making...
February 04 2011 at 2:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIf Verizon saw their best sales day ever by 5AM, I suspect that it will be in their best interest to supply-constrain the iPhone as to not overstress their network out of the gate.
If demand is that high, they WILL see performance issues; despite all their claims, bandwidth is a finite resource, and iPhone users use more than most... and now they are getting millions of new devices in very short order.
It'll be interesting to see. EVDO-rA is much slower than AT&T's HSDPA by nature. If the capacity is there, VZ may not see as much stress due to devices not able to pull down as great a speed as the HSDPA verion. We shall see. My girlfriend's VZW iP4 arrives at some point next week or around that time, she got in on the pre-order and is SUPER excited :)
February 04 2011 at 9:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyLevel 5:
This is the problem with the Verizon iPhone, the download speeds. It will most likely handle it better than some of the older versions of BB's and the like, but should perform just as good as the Droids. When LTE is finally here throughout all the US, it will be a great thing.
The other thing that this iPhone won't do is receive data at the same time you are on the phone. But this is nothing new to Verizon customers so it won't be something we're craving for just yet. I've always wanted that feature but since I haven't been tainted by actually having it, we can wait.
They also blew threw the initial Droid X orders within a few hours. I know because I squeaked in on the initial batch of those phones. And it's a better phone than the iPhone 4.
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