The ramp up to the holiday shopping season looks like it’s going to be an Apple Christmas.
Although the new iPhone 4S was available for only half of October, it was the best-selling smartphone in the month, Canaccord Genuity is reporting.
Mike Dunn said in DigitalTrends: “Apple’s latest and greatest merry iPhone is the best-selling phone on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in the month of October. To add an exclamation mark to that last statement the iPhone 4S was released on October 14, so it out sold everyone else in half the given time.”
He added that the aging iPhone 4 also was among the top three sellers for the carriers, Mike Walkley, tech analyst with Canaccord, wrote in a research note. He suggested there will be record iPhone sales in the December quarter, BGR said.
Walkley increased his fourth-quarter (Apple’s first fiscal quarter of 2012) iPhone sales estimate to 29 million units from his earlier estimate of 27 million.
The Cupertino tech giant recently announced it sold 4 million iPhone 4S units in seven launch markets during its debut weekend. Though some critics disparaged 4S for not being a tech breakthrough, Apple fans liked the new smartphone.
Sprint, the new kid on the iPhone block, said the iPhone launch gave the carrier its “best ever day of sales.” AT&T activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S handsets during the device’s first week of availability.
Any contenders in the wings?
Motorola Mobility is launching its new Droid RAZR Nov. 11, billed as the world’s thinnest smartphone. The old RAZR “dumb” phone set records for thinness and for cell phone sales.
Dunn said: “It will be very interesting to see if [RAZR] will be able to unseat the iPhone on Verizon’s network. There does not seem to be any real contenders coming out in November for Sprint so it seems as though the iPhone is safe on that network. AT&T will be releasing the HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket on Nov. 6, but with so few LTE areas it is very unlikely that they will have overwhelming sales.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Cellular said Apple made it an offer for the iPhone that it had to refuse.
Phil Goldstein reported in FierceWireless that U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon told an earnings conference call the iPhone didn’t add up for the carrier financially. She said Apple’s “terms were unacceptable from a risk and profitability standpoint.” But she added that the company would be open to the iPhone in the future.
