goldman sachs says 700,000 — piper jaffray says 500,000 — global equities research says 525,000 — blackfriars says it could be a million.
it all reminds me of the old sparks song, “i predict”:
You’re gonna take a walk in the rain
And you’re gonna get wet
(I predict)You’re gonna eat a bowl of chow mein
And be hungry real soon
(I predict)
in other words, no one knows what the hell the real number is. what we do know is that it’s an earth-shattering number, one that doesn’t include me but will someday, perhaps soon.
and when we do know the number, it will be an actual number of iphones actually sold to actual people, instead of the fake-y pretend numbers of “products in the channel” that you get from most companies like microsoft and sony.
nintendo reports actual numbers sold for the wii as well. you have to read these references carefully. for instance, here’s a quote from a story that went out on the wire today — Nintendo Wii outsells Sony PS3:
Nintendo has said it sold 5.84 million Wii machines worldwide in the five months since its release in November, 2.37 million in the Americas, and 2.0 million in Japan. The Kyoto-based company said it expected to sell 14 million more Wii machines in the fiscal year ending in March 2008.
Sony has shipped 5.5 million PS3 machines in the fiscal year through March.
note the wording? nintendo: sold. sony: shipped. that means that while 5.84 million wiis are in homes being used, 5.5 million ps3 boxes are god knows where. still in the store, unsold? i’m betting that most of them are.
glad that the companies i support with my dollars, apple and nintendo, don’t play these mindshare games.
and i’m betting that the first announcement you’ll hear from apple is that they have sold one million iphones.
and that announcement will come this week, or early next week.
and to that, i unabashedly say, go apple.