Price Cut Boosted iPhone Sales 300%

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, whose 50-hour survey of Apple stores produced the most definitive estimate of iPhone sales to date, has combined his data with yesterday's report that Apple sold its 1 millionth iPhone on Sunday to calculate the effect of last week's 33% price cut.

By Munster's reckoning, Apple and AT&T were selling an average of 9,000 iPhones a day before the price reduction, which would have put their quarterly sales at 594,000 as of Sept. 5. The two companies had already sold 270,000 phones in the previous quarter. To reach 1 million by Sept. 9, they would have had to sell 136,000 more phones, or 27,000 a day -- a 300% increase.

The new rate, Munster writes in a report to clients issued yesterday, "clearly represents an initial surge that is not sustainable." He estimates that sales will stabilize at a 50% increase.

By the end of the quarter, he believes, Apple will have sold a total 1.28 million iPhones.

http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/09/report-price-cu.html