( 4UMF NEWS ) iPhone Sales Top 5 Million:
Apple on Monday said first weekend sales of the iPhone 5 topped five million, beating the opening weekend for the iPhone 4S nearly a year ago by 1 million units.
Demand has been “incredible,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. He also confirmed that the company sold out completely of its initial shipment. “We are working hard to get an iPhone 5 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible,” he said.
While the phone is hard to come by, many early shoppers found a few things to complain about — and a hidden feature that wowed many.
Apple’s Map app. Corporate warfare had Apple replace Google Maps with its own maps feature, and many users said the new Maps is inferior. Chief complaints: wrong directions and the lack of local transit information. Twitter hashtags (used to help in searches) started popping up this weekend: #Mapsgate, #Mapocalypse and #Thanksapple as folks talked about their bad experiences online. Apple says it’s “just getting started” with Maps and that the app will improve as more people use it.
A hidden surprise. The iPhone is offered for sale with three carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint — and isn’t supposed to be interchangeable among their separate networks. But the Verizon version of the iPhone 5 works on AT&T’s network, as well, the Associated Press discovered. The AP found that a Verizon iPhone 5 accepts an AT&T “SIM card” — a chip that identifies a phone to a network. The phone can then be active on AT&T’s network. That is, if you can find an iPhone5 for sale.
Calls to stores in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Orlando, Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, reported sell-outs for Verizon and AT&T iPhones. A handful of iPhones with Sprint service were available on Sunday. One Apple store in Philadelphia had a handful of Sprint phones with 64 gigabytes of storage available. That device sells for $399 with a two-year contract, up from the entry-level $199 with 16 GB of storage and a two-year contract.
AT&T phones were the first to sell out, in part because the carrier was the first to sell the original iPhone when it launched in 2007. Verizon began selling the iPhone 4 in February 2011, and Sprint joined in with the iPhone 4S in October 2011, so AT&T customers were the most likely to be ready for a contract upgrade.
