As Mashable (and just about everyone else) reports, Apple has sold 1 million iPhones in the 74 days since its launch on June 29th. This is a lot faster than the iPod sold in its beginnings. As Steve Jobs notes, “it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod”. If the sales keep this speed, Apple will “only” sell another 6.5 million , for a total of 7.5 million until the end of 2008. 2.5 million short of its predictions of 10 million sold units. It is almost certain though, that Apple will sell a lot more iPhones with the new $399 price tag the device got just a few days ago.
Apple will obviously also enter the international market and if we can believe French site MacBidouille, the launch date for Germany will be November 12th. The supposed “leaked advertisement” also states that the device will be 3G capable and will therefore be able to access the internet at 3.6Mbit/s. This advertisement, which looks like a typical T-Mobile ad but most likely is a fake, also states that we Europeans will get a 16GB version, like the new iPod touch Apple released. All of this sweetness would come at a much higher price point though.
That Apple inked a deal with InterDigital about licensing 2G and 3G technology also hardens the speculations that they will soon release a 3G iPhone.
I think with international sales about to start, the nice price cut the iPhone got and the holiday season coming up, Apple can be quite confident about selling 10 million units of its wonder product, which turned the whole industry upside down and is covered by the mainstream media just as much as by the geeky blogging crowd, until 2008.
The worthy iTunes competitor we’ve all been waiting for just launched. Amazon introduced their DRM-free music store, which they announced a few months ago, today with 2 million songs priced from 89 cents to $1. Most of the songs are cheaper than they are on iTunes, but obviously the newly opened store can’t keep up with the diversion of the offerings the iTunes Music Store has right now. I found the address, which is quite obscure at the moment, over at GigaOM. Techcrunch is reporting too.
