Apple claims to have sold 1 million units of the new iPhone 3G in the first weekend of its launch. Just three days to sell 1 million units. I find it incredible, considering that there were so many complaints of delays due to activation problems. Many things have been happening with Apple the past week. Some good, some not so good.
The highlight has to be the launch of iPhone 3G. It became available in 22 countries from 11 July 2008 (Singapore not included). Many stores are now out of stock. Selling 1 million phones in 3 days is simply amazing, and well I’m not the only one finding it unbelievable, as Piper Jaffray also disputes the figure.
Apple also claims the new App Store has seen 10 million application downloads in the same weekend. There must be many curious iPod owners out there eager to try out new applications. They did have to try downloading applications one after another, because it turns out that many applications were buggy or mediocre. I’d guess that could be how 10 million downloads came about.
Another event was the launch of MobileMe which happened one day before the iPhone 3G launch. MobileMe’s launch was also plagued by problems. Problems bad enough that Apple had to offer an apology and a 30 day subscription extension.
There is another surprise with MobileMe. Apparently the “push” of data changes between MobileMe and iPhone, and which is also supposed to work with Macs, didn’t quite work out. Synching from Mac to MobileMe happens only every 15 minutes. That means, if you change data in your Mac, MobileMe (and iPhone, etc) will not see it for up to 15 minutes. Apple failed to get this communicated correctly.
Apple has started legal proceedings against Psystar. Psystar had begun to sell Mac cones in April this year. They called it “Open Computer”, and it sold for US$400. If you’ve been around long enough, there was a time in history when Apple’s main business appeared to be suing other people over cloning their products. Now that Macs are really gaining popularity, I wonder if we will start to see more clones and more suing in action.
Speaking of popularity, sales of Macs are really soaring. Apple has overtaken Acer to become the number 3 PC vendor in the United States. They aren’t doing so well in terms of worldwide shipments, but I guess it’s quite clear the Macs are really doing very well.
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