iTold You So

Investors who dumped their Apple shares last Thursday believing the iPhone’s jarring $200 price cut to be a sign that it was falling short of market expectations must be choking on their cornflakes this morning. Apple said it had sold its one-millionth iPhone yesterday, putting it about three weeks ahead of its own internal forecasts. Last Wednesday Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the company was on track to sell one million units of the device by the end of September. “One million iPhones in 74 days–it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” Jobs said in a statement. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this holiday season.”

A lot more customers. Especially if Apple’s to hit Jobs’s target of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Because, as Silicon Valley Insider notes, that’s a daunting goal, even for a company that hit the one million mark in 74 days. “Is 1 million a good number or not?” Dan Frommer asks. “It’s not–not even by Apple’s own low-ball public sales goals. Jobs has announced plans to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008–a year and a half after launch. But a million iPhones in 74 days works out to a little less than 5 million iPhones per year–if you’re selling them at a consistent rate. Apple sold 270,000 machines in the first two frenzied days it was on sale, which means it took 72 more days to sell another 700,000 phones. That’s a 3.6 million annual run rate, which would give Jobs a total of 5.8 million by the end of 2008.”