Apple Sells 10X More iPhone 3GS’ In Opening Weekend Than Palm Pre

• Apple today announced that it has sold over one million iPhone 3GS models through Sunday, June 21, the third day after its launch. In addition, six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days since its release.
• “Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.”
• I guess Elevation Partners guessed wrong about everyone ditching out of their expired contracts to jump on board with Sprint and the Palm Pre. The new iPhone sold more in its weekend opening than the Palm Pre has since its launch in the first week of June. Comparing the two opening weekends shows all the difference. The iPhone sold over 1 million units this weekend, where analysts mark Palm Pre sales from their opening weekend at 100,000.
• Jonathan Atkin, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, put total sales tallies at slightly less than 100,000. The number of phones a Sprint store received depended on expected demand, Atkin said. Top tier stores received 60 phones, middle tier stores received 35, and low-tier stores received an undetermined amount less than 35. Best Buy, meanwhile, received single digit number of phones, and Radio Shack’s stock was unclear, he said. Given Best Buy’s “relatively insignificant” contribution to sales, and the approximately 1,600 Sprint Stores throughout the country, doing the math produces a number slightly less than 100,000 phones, Atkin concluded [PcMag]
• Are we starting to realize that Elevation Partners and their hype man, Roger McNamme, knew all along that the Palm Pre was less of an iPhone competitor and more of a way to drive the stock price up? Now that both new phones have launched, we will see what happens to the Palm stock price as more numbers are released. The stock closed down 7.7% today to $12.86 a share.

Tagged as: compare, iPhone, opening weekend, Pre, sales, sales comparisson