iPhone Sales: the Danger of Not Reporting Figures

IanFogg | January 20, 2008, 11:41 PM

The FT reports that UK iPhone sales are below target (also covered on the Inquirer if the FT story is behind the subscription wall for you).

Apple has chosen not to report Europe-splits for iPhone data, just as it has always done for the iPod. I hope we'll hear more hard details this week as Apple announces its financial results, but Apple's track record with publishing iPod sales data for non-US markets is not encouraging.

During his keynote last week Steve Jobs reported 4m iPhone sales to date. Without a pause, he confusingly moved on to talk about iPhone's US market share, the 200 days that the iPhone has been available, and hence that iPhone was selling 20k units per day. But the 4m is a global sales figure, not one for the US alone, so the 20k a day is misleading. The iPhone has been available since just November in Europe, and not 200 days.

If Apple and its partners persist in not reporting UK sales results, especially after one of Apple's partners has named a specific target sales figure for the first two months of 200k, then it's only natural that observers such as the FT will assume the worst: i.e. iPhone hasn't hit its target.

The sad thing is that the sales for the first two months -- whether they are bad or good -- are not the exam that the iPhone has to pass for Apple to succeed with mobile. The iPhone family has to be more than a one hit wonder over a couple of months for iPhone to meet everyone's expectations, including those of Apple and its operator partners.