Tuesday, September 4,2007 @ 11:15am
iPhone outpaces all US smartphones in July
The iPhone managed to outperform all other smartphones on the market in its first full month on sale, according to a new study published today by iSuppli. The market researchers used a survey of 2 million people which estimated that about 1.8 percent of all cellphones sold in the US during July were iPhones, regardless of class. This figure gave it an edge over all other previous smartphone champions, including Research in Motion and its BlackBerry line, Palm's Treo series, and less prevalent phones from Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung, according to the analyst group. The number also tied sales of the best-selling feature phone on the market, the LG Chocolate, though iSuppli would not say whether this applied to the original model on sale with Verizon or its recent upgrade.
Such figures are claimed as impressive for the phone, which is Apple's first and blurs the distinctions between data-heavy smartphones and conventional media phones. The sudden competitive relevance is "unprecedented" for the cellphone industry and is noteworthy for the sheer opposition that faced the California company during the launch, iSuppli said.
"Apple achieved this in the face of numerous, well-entrenched competitors," the researchers added.
iSuppli also noted that many early adopters were converts, with a full 25 percent having switched to AT&T from a rival carrier such as T-Mobile or Verizon. Most buyers regardless of their initial carrier were also relatively young men under 35 with at least one completed college degree, according to the study. These and the breakthrough first-month sales led the analysts to echo previous estimates of 4.5 million iPhones sold by the end of 2007 and a long-term prediction of as many as 30 million iPhones per year by 2011.