The research firm Gartner reports that, for the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone continues to increase its market share on a world-wide level. In fact, it leads the way with the highest increase of market share, as sales increased by 10.5% from one year ago.

This increase of market share can be accounted for due to a few separate reasons. For starters, the early June price drop of the iPhone 3G to $99 was clearly a great way to move inventory while boosting sales. Apple’s product release timing is also plays a large role in their success. While releasing iPhone 3GS to the market at the very end of the second quarter of 2009 all of the initial sales were included in this report.

Everyone knows the iPhone took mind share early on, and there’s little doubt left they own profit share as well. It will be interesting to see where market share ultimately ends up…

[via MacRumors]

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iPhone Market Share Continuing to Climb

We already knew Apple sold — and upsold — 1 million iPhone 3GS devices opening weekend, but an internal memo shows just how big an event that was for AT&T. Massive summer blockbuster, thy name is iPhone 3GS.

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

Now imagine how many they would have sold if MMS and tethering were ready, and they’d expanding their network to better handle iPhone traffic.

(What, the dead horse had it coming!)

[Via MacDailyNews, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Memo Leaked — iPhone 3GS Makes for Best Selling Debut Ever

Jeremy will likely be back soon with your regular dose of Apps for Less, but as the Easter/Passover/Whatever your holiday of preference weekend begins, a couple sites are taking advantage of users likely to have some free time, and family avoidance needs, on their hands with special App sales.

First up, Easter App Sales has a score (20 for you digital types) of discounts listed for Hero of Zero, Nintaii, Tap Forms, Caddy.me, Memengo Wallet, Restaurant Find, Distant Suns, iBearMoney, Varinome, Grand Tour, iBearBrain, Twelve Steps Companion, Memory and Systems info, Japanese Phrases, Fast Food Calorie Counter, Currency Exchange Rates, iMissal, Doctors, and SleepStream.

Arnold Kim also points out via Twitter that AppShopper is keeping track of “lots of Easter Sales in the App Store”.

If you spot any super sweet deals to go along with our candy eggs, chocolate matzah, or non-religious sugar frosted truffles, let us know!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Holiday Weekend App Sales Begin!

With record quarters and more money in the bank than… well, many banks, it’s hard to see Apple getting hit by “hard economic times”, but according to CNet, they either are, or are preparing to be:

Sources who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal confirmed reports by Valleywag and 9to5Mac.com that roughly 50 salespeople were let go by the company for “business and economic reasons,” according to one source. An entire sales group based in Austin, Texas, was let go as well as workers in Cupertino, Calif., where Apple is headquartered. Those affected were given severance packages and the opportunity to apply for other jobs inside Apple.

Hopefully all the workers find those other jobs inside Apple quickly.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Lays off 50 Enterprise Sales Staff

Rumors are flying today that Apple may have already hit the suddenly-not-so-outrageous-sounding 10 Million iPhones Sold goal set by Steve Jobs for 2008. Reader Reptile pointed us to Seeking Alpha’s IMEI tracking coverage:

The consensus estimates for iPhone sales figures for Apple’s Q4 (calendar Q3) were calling for approximately 4 million units. It now appears that Apple has sold at least 7 to 7.5 million iPhones in Q4—that’s nearly 80% above consensus. Apple has far surpassed even Gene Munster’s bullish estimates of 5 million iPhone sales in Q4 according to the data. [...] Coming into the quarter, Apple had already sold 2.42 million iPhones. Thus, 7.6 million 3G iPhones sold puts Apple above 10 million units for the year.

Magic 8-Ball? Most likely

Apple’s quarterly conference call, scheduled for Oct. 21, should put some official numbers to the iPhone tally, but we think it’s safe to say they’re doing pretty fine. NPD, after all, has just released their numbers which show, according to Apple Insider, that the iPhone is now the #2 selling handset in the US (trailing only the cockroach-like ubiquity of the RAZRv3). CIO.com is going so far as to say the iPhone is the #1 selling smartphone in the US!

Who’s this hurting? The 30% who dumped their original carriers to get an iPhone AT&T:

The bulk of new iPhone owners who switched — 47% — left Verizon Wireless, while another 24% dumped T-Mobile and 19% switched from Sprint.

Ouch! Analysts are touting the T-Mobile Android/Google G1 and Verizon Blackberry Storm as possible blood-clotters for the other networks. However, while iPhone 2.x is already on the market (and Macworld 2009’s potential further revelations just around the corner), the G1 and Storm are racing to catch up with what are likely to be very public beta-devices of their own. And they’re light-years further along than the caught-flat-footed Windows Mobile 7 and Palm OS 2 Nova…

What do you think? Did Apple hit on a winning formula this year? Or was it all advertising sizzle and no steak? Can the other carriers/manufacturers come back? Or could it be that while everyone else was working on increasingly complex little smartphones with poor UI running on hobbled, outdated OS’s, Apple snuck in a real mobile computing platform tucked away behind iPod-like ease of use?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Revenge of the Analysts: iPhone #1 Smartphone? #2 Handset? 10 Million Already Sold?!

3 days. That’s how long it took Apple and their carrier-partners to sell one million iPhone 3Gs. Says Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend. It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”

Almost 25 times faster. Server crash-induced delays not withstanding, other manufacturers — other carriers — must be having a sobering Monday morning. (Especially with it taking 6 months for Palm sell as many uber-cheap Centros…)

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1,000,000 iPhone 3Gs Served — In 3 Days!

Steve Jobs announced Apple would sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. Up until June, given waning sales, 3G expectations, and large-scale unavailability from Apple and carriers alike, it didn’t look possible.

Enter $199. Jobs said it. I said it. Casey said it. Pretty much everyone and their blog said it. Now the analysts are saying it to:

Sales BOOM!

In total [RBC's Mike Abramsky] expects Apple to sell 14 million iPhones by the end of the year [...] For 2009 though Abramsky is only predicting sales of 24 million, a drastic difference from Piper Jaffray estimates of 45 million. Observes note however that Piper is factoring in unannounced sibling iPhones, which could make the device more affordable for the average person.

They’re talking iPod scale numbers now, folks.

What do you think? Can Apple do with the iPhone what they did with the iPod?

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iPhone Sales Predictions: 14m in 2008… 24m in 2009?!