iPhone won't hit sales target

While the Jerk of Cupertino appeared happy that Apple had sold four million units of the Iphone in 200 days, or 20,000 per day, the company’s seems set to miss its original target of ten million in one year.

Jobs announced the latest sales figure at Macworld, San Fran. But he seems to have overlooked some key factors. For starters, Q4 is when the majority of mobile phones are sold as people give them to each other for Xmas.

So Apple has gone right past the hot sales season and still has six million handsets to sell. There have been persistent rumours that O2 has been gagged over its actual UKIphones sales.

Plus the news from elsewhere is pretty bad. It seems almost certain that Apple's deal with the world's most important cellular market – China – has fallen flat.

China Mobile has hinted strongly that talks with Apple over the Iphone have stalled. Plus there was a great deal of speculation that Japan's NTT DoCoMo would announce a deal with Apple. But that hasn't happened either.

As the INQ accurately predicted, the Jerk also didn't announce a 3G version of the Iphone in San Fran and instead relied on saying how wonderful the new release, 1.1.3, of the Iphone software was.

The most impressive thing about 1.1.3 appears to be that it has reputedly screwed up owners of legally unlocked Iphones who bought them in France and Germany.

The INQ isn't entirely sure of the veracity of such reports because nobody ever seems to quote an irate owner whose Iphone is now useless.

So reports of Continental Iphones being country locked may be exaggerated.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/16/iphone-won-hit-sales-target