If you’re a fan of carnival games like “Guess how many marble are in the jar,” then you might be interested in our new game: “guess how many iPhones Orange and Apple sold in France.” If you cast your mind back a ways, you may recall Orange CEO Didier Lombard (pictured) predicting sales of between 50,000-100,000 iPhones in France before the end of the year. Fortunately, that’s a pretty wide target to hit, especially with Orange doling out 30,000 handsets in the first five days.
However, it seems like most of those salivating over the prospect of an iPhone picked one up in that period, since the sales figures are in, and Orange sold 70,000 iPhones total in 2007. That’s well within Lombard’s predicted range, but consider that almost half of them were sold in the first five days the iPhone was available and, well, it would seem sales dropped off a bit. Still 70,000 isn’t all that bad, especially considering as almost half of the buyers were new Orange customers.
I think this will quash expectations of 5 million by Macworld Expo, unless sales were simply through the roof in the US. That said, 70,000 is a decent number in France for a fairly pricey new phone. I've heard that only 5% were the full unlocked version, although we don't know what percentage will unlock their phones for free in a few months or after their contracts run out (which customers are allowed to do in France). Supposedly UK sales are still unimpressive (but there are conflicting reports about Carphone Warehouse's sales), and nothing yet in Germany (where expectations were lower). My guess is that sales will be somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million by Macworld Expo. Still an impressive number, but the lag in Europe is worrying. Perhaps it means that a newer version will be on the way sooner, or at least a very significant software upgrade and price drop in Europe.
We are waiting it!!
Italy