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Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

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141–150 of 186 posts

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're missing an important point: If you own your phone you can get much cheaper 'SIM only' deals with the mobile carriers, meaning that over your 1-2 year contract, you'll pay far less. Getting a new phone as part of a 'subsidised' contract is effectively borrowing money to buy a phone. Your loan repayments are the monthly fee. If you have the cash, buying the phone up-front is almost always cheaper.

Not the biggest U.S. mobile carriers. AT&T and Verizon have awful BYOD plans, as I understand it. I'd be thrilled to find out I could do better than my grandfathered AT&T unlimited plan (two phones, 5GB/each before throttled, $120/mo.), but keep their network.

Assuming you dont voice much. T-Mobile offers prepaid(bring your own phone) $30/mo unlimited 4G and SMS with 100 minutes. Assuming you always want the latest iPhone, you save about $200 per 2 year. This deal was way back before LTE availability, So it WAS a hot deal.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#142
post #101
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mocking Android fanboys in a forum overwhelmingly dominated by Apple adulation? I hate to use a Reddit/4chan meme, but so brave ...

Funny, I thought HN was dominated by Android fanboys. Perception is everything eh?

Quote from almost a decade ago by a Linux fangirl - "I love MS products, but I cannot stand their policies"

My perception is that here the situation is similar.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#143
post #34
post #28

There you go, more proof that most people don't give a shit about surveillance, privacy and the lot. Here it is, the one device that can create the biggest fingerprint database in the world sold 9 million units in a couple of days. NSA must be jubilating. Very "forward thinking" indeed.

No, it can't. Why people don't listen to the damn talks given by the people who build these things is beyond me. It was explicitly said during the announcement that no fingerprint is actually stored. It looks for certain unique ridges and swirls and builds up a hash from that. That hash is the only thing communicated to Apple. No fingerprint data is transfered.

You're wrong. Nothing is communicated to Apple, ever. Fingerprint data stays in the secure memory on the A7 and the scanner is the only thing that has access to it. The system is completely closed to the device which contains the TouchID sensor. For example, you can't use your fingerprint to activate a new device.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#144
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but prices dropping by $100 also stirs up emotions. I'm not implying that Apple didn't do a great job by moving to the 5S/5C split, just that it'd be fairer and more useful to compare 5S/5C to 5/4S and 4S/4 - if only for the fact that it doesn't leave any room for pedants like me to argue :-)

My 'if I was an oracle' wish would be two-fold: I realise 5S supply would be very, very constrained initially... so how well did introducing the 5C unconstrained at launch work? I think the 'champagne' phone would have sold out in the launch weekend, regardless of supply. Is Apple playing this out? (yes). Every customer lining up, or entering stores are dropping almost a grand. You want to keep some top tier 64gb 'sp…

http://qz.com/127294/what-apple-wont-tell-you-the-iphone-5s-...

This article is claiming that most of the phones sold are 5S's, actually... which would mean the 5C is making a moderate difference to that number... just enough to bump from 7 million to 9 million, perhaps!

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#145
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more interesting is why do people do that just with Apple phones? Samsung seems to get their phones out and about without the same kind of theater and is matching Apple sale for sale these days. It's like people waiting in line to see the latest Star Wars film, but a crappy movie about Blue Forest Indians riding Dragons outsells it.

> It's like people waiting in line to see the latest Star Wars film, but a crappy movie about Blue Forest Indians riding Dragons outsells it. Samsung phones are "Star Wars" and the iPhone is "a crappy movie about Blue Forest Indians riding Dragons"? That surely puts your "overheard at my company/neighbor's trailer" BS in perspective.

I guess my analogy must have been confusing, since you assumed that the "line waiting" referred to Samsung phones...which it clearly does not since nobody waits in line for Samsung phones.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#146
post #36
post #28

There you go, more proof that most people don't give a shit about surveillance, privacy and the lot. Here it is, the one device that can create the biggest fingerprint database in the world sold 9 million units in a couple of days. NSA must be jubilating. Very "forward thinking" indeed.

You missed the part where the fingerprint is stored so it's not even accessible to the OS and are never stored online? Oh, but I guess the NSA has a back door and will manage to collect them all without anyone noticing, right? Just like they record all the sound from your phone mic and upload it? I'm all against unlawful spying by the NSA, but give me a break.

I take it you are OK with _lawful_ spying by the NSA?

I do not believe them the fingerprint is not stored.

People claim just a hash is saved, maybe - but what is stopping the gov for example to use the same algorithm and hash their existing fingerprint db?

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#147

Clearly they are going out of business. Not to mention only 200 Million devices running iOS7 so far.

In the long run we are all dead. And all companies go bankrupt. Aggregated numbers do not tell the whole story. If smartphones mature to good enough and people shift to slower upgrade cycles (think 2006-7 in PC terms) then apple will have trouble growing. And in our quarterly reports world growth is what counts. Which is already hard when you have the revenue of a couple of countries. And there are not many people th…

In the long run we are all dead. And all companies go bankrupt.

Interesting to ponder which happens first...

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#148
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, I'd estimate somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000, which is only slightly less absurd than your joke. From what I've heard, Apple stores typically only had ten or so gold units each available on launch day. That's what it was at the store where I was, and I've heard the same from others. Multiply that by the 413 Apple stores worldwide and... that's not very many. Pretty crazy.

Other retail stores (Best Buy, Target, Wal-mart, cell phone stores, etc) got at least some shipments over the weekend, did they not? Perhaps some golds were included in those.

Extremely few. I doubt they got enough phones to make any significant difference in the overall numbers.

Totally anecdotally, I reserved a black (sorry, "space gray") phone at Target on Wednesday as a backup plan, in case I failed at the Apple store. They still haven't told me it's ready.

From what I've heard (hooray for rumors!) non-Apple stores are getting just a handful of phones, while Apple's stores are going through hundreds or thousands.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned on the other thread, pointing to the official announcement, the iPhone 5 launched in China on a different date, so it had 2 million sales on its launch there. So to get the real comparison you need to add first weekend sales of the 4S in standard launch countries and China to that 7 million figure.

That makes the 9 million figure a whole lot less impressive. From 7+ million to 9 million... but it's not that unthinkable that there could have been 2 million iPhone 4S's sold when the iPhone 5 launched, so that it could even be a step down from the previous year.

Right, 9 million is pretty unimpressive, especially when you consider that Blackberry managed to sell over 3 million last quarter. Major Fail Apple.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#150
post #108
post #88

Remember all the naysaying? One story on HN claimed Apple had a "Windows 95 problem". Yet it seems that every time Apple reveals a product that tech blogs are disappointed with, it goes on to set sales records.

First of all, this is an international phone. Second. there are TWO phones. It's likely that sales figures are very similar to last year's marked-down 4S and 5 sales combined, but if you count the delayed international launch last year and combine the sales after all markets were opened to the net sales this year, there's likely little to no difference.

I agree, Apple is doomed.
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