iPhone 5 matches monthlong sales figures for 4S in just 3 days
More data rolling in attests to a blockbuster start for Apple's iPhone 5. The latest evidence: A new report from ComScore, which finds that the first three days of iPhone 5 preorders equaled the earlier Apple record set by the iPhone 4S over the course of a month.
Everybody's got a pet explanation for why the iPhone 5 is selling like hotcakes, and ComScore's boils down to this:
- There are more people in the market for a smartphone than ever before.
- There's also a "substantial group" of holdouts who waited for the iPhone 5. Though Q2 handset sales usually pick up,that wasn't the case this year. It's highly possible that those people eligible for upgrades held out on buying a new device in anticipation of the fall release of the iPhone 5.
ComScore's report follows an earlier note out of Piper Jaffray that found that 83 percent of iPhone 5 buyers were upgrading from a previous version of the iPhone compared with 73 percent for the 4S and 77 percent for the 4. If the reports out of both outfits are accurate, it would also suggest that the well-chronicled problems reported in Apple's iOS 6 mapping app have had no impact on demand.
Meanwhile:
- AT&T has emerged as the biggest seller of iPhones among phone carriers, with 68 percent of total U.S. online sales in the first three days of the phone's release.
- Verizon captured 24 percent of online sales.
- Sprint had 8 percent.
