After last week Steve Jobs announced Apple is going to
cancel the 4GB version of its popular iPhone and the $ 399 price tag for the
8GB version, today the Cupertino
company announced it sold its one millionth iPhone yesterday. The iPhone was
launched 74 days ago on June 29.
“One million iPhones in 74 days—it took almost two years to
achieve this milestone with iPod,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait
to get this revolutionary product into the hands of even more customers this
holiday season.”
In fact, the holiday season was invoked in Jobs’s open
letter posted on the company website after early adopters of iPhone were
enraged by the price cut.
“First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to
lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right
time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to 'go
for it' this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now
it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every
iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone 'tent'. We
strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.”
Jobs wrote in his letter.
Apple’s announcement is a confirmation of the previous
reports that had indicated that iPhone is a best-seller. Last week, iSuppli said
that in its first month of presence on the market, the iPhone accounted for 1.8
percent of all mobile handset sales in the U.S, meaning that more than 220,000
handsets have been bought during summer’s hottest month.
Also, the iPhone was indicated by the research firm IDC as the
big story of the last. "Even though limited in the number of units
shipped, the iPhone is likely to have a disproportionately large impact on the
industry. For one, it has pushed the envelope on industrial design and user
interfaces for all vendors”, said Shiv K. Bakhshi, Ph.D., director of worldwide
mobile device research at IDC.
iPhone features a touch-screen input technology called
Multi- Touch, controlled by sliding a finger across its touch-sensitive, 9-
centimetre (3.5-inch), 160-pixel-per-inch display. The display automatically
switches between landscape or portrait mode thanks to a built-in sensor.
The 11.6-millimetre thick device also sports a 2-megapixel
camera, headset jack, 3.5-millimetre audio jack, SIM tray, a sleep-wake switch,
speaker, microphone and an iPod dock connector. The quad-band GSM plus EDGE
phone also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 capabilities.
Some rumors have indicated that Apple is working on a version
with 3G capabilities to be launched in Europe,
later this year.
In January, Steve Jobs said that Apple is targeting 10
million iPhones sold until the end of 2008.
