iPhone Sales

Apple has made it official, sales of the white iPhone 4 have been postponed until spring 2011. Spring 2011? Why would anyone buy a white iPhone 4 right before the iPhone 5 is launched? Speculation is rampant that Apple might just cancel the white model. In a first since June, the photo and ordering information for the white iPhone 4 has been removed from the Apple online store.

Reports about why the delay has taken so long have varied but most involve some type of manufacturing issue. Problems cited range from CEO Steve Jobs complaining about the home button not matching the white-colored glass to technical difficulties with light leakage into the camera sensor. Whatever the case, Apple's suppliers have been struggling to come up with engineering procedures for the white glass.

AT&T beat its previous iPhone sales record by activating 5.2 million iPhone units during the third quarter of 2010. A whopping 3.2 million iPhone were activated in the previous quarter with the launch of the iPhone 4. A full quarter of iPhone buyers this time around were new customers to AT&T.

Overall, the company activated 8 million smartphones including the iPhone. AT&T now has 92.8 million subscribers in the US, but still lags behind leader Verizon Wireless. Over 57 percent of AT&T customers carry a smartphone or other device with a full integrated keyboard.

China Unicom was forced to stop taking iPhone 4 pre-orders after launch day saw 60,000 units sold and over 200,000 pre-orders. iPhone 4 inventory was wiped out shortly after Apple made the iPhone 4 available on September 25 through exclusive Chinese wireless carrier China Unicom and the Apple Store.

Shanghai and Beijing saw the opening of two new Apple retail stores on the same day. Over 1,000 people lined up outside the Beijing store up to two days in advance hoping to get their hands on an iPhone 4 before anyone else. The Chinese iPhone 4 launch came just three months after the device was launched in the US.

Evidence has surfaced that retailers are getting ready for Apple's white iPhone 4 launch. It's likely Apple would like to see the white model on shelves before the holiday shopping season. Screenshots of an internal inventory system at Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless have been leaked showing two white iPhone 4 models.

Like the black iPhone 4, white iPhones will be available in two storage capacities, 16GB and 32GB. Apparently Rogers has historically only added product information to the system if launch is imminent. Not to be outdone, US retailers are also prepping for the white iPhone 4 arrival.

Overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4 took down Korea Telecom (KT) servers during the launch of pre-ordering and resulted in 130,000 units sold in just 13 hours. The device will ship and hit shelves at 2,900 KT stores nationwide in September. Pre-ordering began at 6:00 AM local time, with the first 100k units sold by the end of lunch hour.

In contrast, the iPhone 3GS sold 60,000 units over five days in South Korea when it launched in December 2009. KT is the second largest wireless provider in the country, and although the company increased its web server capacity they did not expect demand to be so strong. Web ordering went down intermittently throughout the day, with traffic swamping the available bandwidth. AT&T and Apple had similar issues with pre-ordering in the US this June.