Apple generates $1 billion in sales from over 1.7 million iPhone 4s sold at launch
It's Apple's fastest selling device ever
Aside from the minor issue of whether you can make a call if you're not holding it in the prescribed manner, Apple's iPhone 4 has leapt to the top of the company's fastest launches ever list.
Three days after the June 24 launch, it had sold over 1.7 million iPhone 4s, or 23,611 per hour, in the five launch territories - the US, the UK, France, Germany and Japan.
It will be available in another 18 countries by the end of July.
Assuming the roughly $600 per unit Apple makes from selling previous generation iPhones still stands (calculated over the device's lifetime), that's over $1 billion in revenue booked in.
Upgrade route"This is the most successful product launch in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.
"Even so, we apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply."
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster found that 77 percent of buyers he surveyed in three US cities on the launch day were existing iPhone customers who were upgrading. That was up from 56 percent for the iPhone 3GS launch.
[source: Apple]
