Estimated 100,000 Droid Handsets Sold In The First Weekend
The first weekend sales estimate for Motorola Droid are out.
As Bloomberg reports, while the number is absolutely commendable, they come nowhere near the opening weekend sales of any of the iPhone models launched in the past.
Verizon reportedly sold close to 100,000 Droid handsets the past weekend. The corresponding numbers for the first generation of iPhone was 270,000 and that for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS were close to one million respectively.
According to Jim Suva, an analyst at Citigroup, this does not however mean that the Droid has failed to meet the hype surrounding its launch. He says
"It wasn’t as good as the iPhone, but anybody that was expecting that had their expectations too high"
Suva predicts Verizon to sell close to 1.3 million Droid handsets by the end of this year and sell another 9 million in 2010. For a perspective, compare this with iPhone's sales estimate of 28.5 million handsets for 2010.
Having said that, it is not entirely fair to draw conclusions from the opening weekend sales figures alone. The first generation of iPhone was launched in a much better economic climate. Also, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS made their debut internationally and not just within USA. With the shopping season to pick up momentum in the next few weeks, a fair comparison could only be made in a quarter's period.
While Motorola and Verizon have not yet released official sales numbers, we can still safely guess that sales were close to their own internal demand forecasts. Despite the aggressive campaigning against AT&T and iPhone, Verizon apparently did not expect the sales numbers to clock anywhere close to the iPhone numbers having stocked only around 200,000 Droid handsets for the launch.
However, both Verizon and AT&T would be looking eagerly to cash in on the holiday season ahead to close the final quarter of 2009 on a high. Do you think Verizon's aggressive campaign against AT&T can give it an upper hand? Please put forth your opinion in the comments.
[via Bloomberg]
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