In two hours, Apple’s smartphone breaks all the carrier’s first-day launch sales
That didn’t take long.
Verizon (VZ) announced Friday that it had halted pre-sales of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, having burned through its first shipment in less than a day.
It took only two hours — from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST Thursday — for the company to sell more phones than any first-day launch in its history, according to Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead.
Within 17 hours it had run out of its “limited” supply — which RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky estimates at something less than 100,000 units. (That number that seems low compared with the 600,000 iPhone 4s Apple pre-sold in one day last June.)
In any event, the stock out, Abramsky told clients, “affirms the strong pent-up demand for the Verizon iPhone, and bodes well for initial sell-through.”
Based on first-day sales, Susquehanna’s Jeff Fidacaro estimates that Verizon will sell 2.9 million iPhones before the end of March and a total of 11.6 million iPhones in 2011.
Some customers who pre-ordered iPhones have already been notified that their units have shipped. Retail sales of iPhones Verizon’s outlets begin Feb. 10 at 7 a.m. local time. We expect to see some lines.
Also on Fortune.com:
- Verizon iPhone: The reviews are in
- Rate plans: How AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile stack up
- Apple is still sucking most of the profit out of the mobile phone business
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
