By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com
June 22, 2009
Preceded by a mountain of hype, Apple's rollout late last week of the iPhone 3GS was apparently more than successful. By the end of the weekend, the company claimed it had sold one million of the new smart phones.
In addition, six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days since its release, the company said. The three-day sales volume of one million units equals the rollout of the iPhone 3G last year.
"Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning," the company said in a statement attributed to Steve Jobs, who reportedly recently underwent a liver transplant. "With over 50,000 applications available from Apples revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever."
Consumers were also apparently drawn to the upgraded iPhone by its increased speed and new array of features. Apples says the new iPhone 3GS is up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G and has longer battery life. It also features a three megapixel autofocus camera, video recording and hands free voice control.
The iPhone 3GS includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, am operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS, Spotlight, Search, landscape keyboard and more. iPhone 3GS customers will get access to more than 50,000 applications from Apples App Store, where customers have already downloaded over one billion apps.
iPhone 3GS 16GB model has a price tag of $199 and the 32GB model is $299. At the same time, Apple lowered the price of its entry level iPhone to $99 for the 8GB model.
The technology press has been suitably impressed so far. Marin Perez, writing on InformationWeek.com, says the sales numbers are particularly impressive when you consider Apple and AT&T threw up a few roadblocks in consumers' way.
"Many iPhone 3G subscribers werent eligible for the $199 and $299 price points, and may have had to pay a $200 premium," Perez noted. "Additionally, Apple lowered the price of the iPhone 3G to $99 and released an updated firmware that adds existing functionality to existing iPhones."
