Seeking Alpha

davswa's  Instablog

davswa
5 Followers
1 Following
Send Message
I have been a technology investor for many years. I have also tried to stay abreast of developments since the days when mainframes dominated buildings and were the only computers available. I have used Apple, Windows, and Linux computers and feel that I have a decent handle on what technologies... More
My blog:
Apple Investor Blog
  • Verizon sells 4.7 million iPhones in Q1 (7 weeks of sales) 4 comments
    Feb 18, 2011 12:02 PM
    Everyone wants to know how well the iPhone is doing at Verizon.  Here is my estimate and the methodology I used to get it.  I will update this estimate twice a week.

    According to AT&T quarterly reports the company has sold approximately 34 million iPhones until the end of 2010.  To be conservative let's assume that 10% of those older phones are no longer in service leaving 30.6 million in service.  AT&T is currently selling approximately 45 thousand/day (that number may be going down a bit now that Verizon has the iPhone - I will adjust once AT&T Q1 numbers are released).  The advertising tracking site labs.chitika.com/iZone/ displays the percentage of iPhones from both AT&T and Verizon networks that visit its advertising partners.  By combining this data an estimate of the number of iPhones on the Verizon network can be made.  For example, on February 11, 2011 3.0% of iPhones were on the Verizon network.  The total number of iPhones on AT&T on that date is estimated at 30.6 million + 48 * 45,000 = 32.4 million.  The number of Verizon iPhones is therefore approximately 1 million so that the percentage is 1/(32.4+1) = 3%.

    In the table below I list the estimated active units in millions for both carriers as well as the estimated sales/day (averaged since Feb. 11) of iPhones at Verizon in millions.

    Mar 31 Update:  the quarter is done and I estimate 4.73 million iPhone sales at Verizon.  We'll have to wait a few weeks to find out if I am correct.

    iPhone count in millions
        Verizon
     Date AT&T Units Sales Per day
    (Avg since Feb 11)
    11-Feb-11 32.42 1.00  
    17-Feb-11 32.69 1.83 .138
    19-Feb-11 32.78 2.13 .141
    25-Feb-11 33.05 2.41 .093
    1-Mar-11 33.18 2.5 .088
    4-Mar-11 33.36 2.78 .085
    8-Mar-11 33.54 3.04 .082
    12-Mar-11 33.78 3.60 .090
    19-Mar-11 34.04 3.95 .082
    24-Mar-11 34.26 4.15 .077
    27-Mar-11 34.40 4.43 .078
    31-Mar-11 34.58 4.73 .08

    If the Q1 sales estimate is correct that would translate into approximately $3 billion in incremental revenue for Apple's Q2 and $1.3 billion in incremental earnings.

Back To davswa's Instablog HomePage »

Instablogs are blogs which are instantly set up and networked within the Seeking Alpha community. Instablog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors, in contrast to contributors' articles.

Comments (4)
Track new comments
  • skeep01
    , contributor
    , premium contributor
    Comments (4) | Send Message
     
    Your number of iPhone subscribers is way off. According to Comscore: "63.2 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December 2010 ... Apple accounted for 25.0 percent of smartphone subscribers". That means there were 15.8 million iPhone subscribers.
    27 Feb 2011, 08:10 PM Reply Like
  • davswa
    , contributor
    , premium contributor
    Comments (41) | Send Message
     
    Author’s reply » I have seen the Comscore numbers and I guess I just have to disagree with them. It is a fact that AT&T has reported 34 million activations of iPhones and it is a fact that Apple has sold 90 million iPhones so the AT&T number seems reasonable from that perspective. I don't think that many iPhones sold in the U.S. in the last three years have been sent to landfills and certainly not phones sold in the last two years which are still under contract.

     

    So I will stand by my numbers and we will have to wait another 5-6 weeks to see if they are close to being accurate.
    27 Feb 2011, 10:53 PM Reply Like
  • skeep01
    , contributor
    , premium contributor
    Comments (4) | Send Message
     
    Well, it looks like Comscore numbers are correct. It appears the majority of iPhone owners replace their phones often and don't bother to sell used ones.
    22 Apr 2011, 02:36 AM Reply Like
  • davswa
    , contributor
    , premium contributor
    Comments (41) | Send Message
     
    Author’s reply » I can't argue with your numbers - clearly mine were incorrect.

     

    It's a complete mystery to me. Even just considering AT&T activations in the last two years (that is the phones are still under contract) that would be 27.5 million which seems high by something like 7 million. So 1/3 of the people under contract have stopped using their iPhones? Doesn't make sense to me.
    22 Apr 2011, 02:22 PM Reply Like
Full index of posts »
Latest Followers

Latest Comments


Most Commented
Posts by Themes
long-ideas, Q4 results, sohn-canada-pitch
Instablogs are Seeking Alpha's free blogging platform customized for finance, with instant set up and exposure to millions of readers interested in the financial markets. Publish your own instablog in minutes.