In case you didn’t hear, a new iPhone was released this week, and you know what that means: Crowds of people clamoring to get Apple’s latest and greatest. Except in Verizon’s case, for the most part the crowds failed to materialize.
Engadget is reporting that the Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 largely failed to impress at Thursday’s official on-sale date. According to Reuters, both the “San Francisco and New York flagship Apple Store locations boasted as few as forty individuals in line -- and that by afternoon today, the initial shipment of devices were still in stock.”
That’s a far cry from the release of the last four models of the iPhone, which saw ever-increasing crowds outside local AT&T and Apple retail outlets each year as a new model was released. So what happened?
First, Verizon opened preorders more than a week ago to their existing customers, and supposedly sold more handsets in the first two hours than any device that came before -- ultimately selling out before the end of the first day. That only leaves the new customers who have been waiting out AT&T’s exclusivity, and apparently there aren’t as many of those as previously thought.
Given that 90 percent of AT&T iPhone users are already locked into two-year agreements (according to the carrier), Verizon will likely pick up most of their business as time goes on and those contracts come to and end -- unless AT&T can bait them into staying, perhaps with attractive offers such as their new Unlimited Any Mobile to Mobile plan which not-so coincidentally also launched on Thursday.
To see how painful the Verizon iPhone 4 launch was, check out the embedded video below from YouTube user ojezap -- the sprawling Mall of America had exactly two people in line at the Apple Store there, and it’s shocking to see the employees outnumber the customers by at least ten times.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Image and video courtesy of Engadget and YouTube)
erlicthemad
February 11, 2011 at 9:55am
Considering two important fact I am not that surprised.
1. Most Verizon customers are under contract. I am not willing to pay $600 for a new phone. Instead I will wait for my contract to expire. In my case its just in time for the iPhone 6.
2. Apple fans know that Apple will release a new phone this summer. iPhone 5, why buy last years tech only to be locked into it for the next two years. Especially with the new phone coming in 4-5 months. We Verzion users have been waiting for 3 years whats 4 months after all that.
In addition the regular Verizon users already had their phones that wanted them. When they ordered online a week ago.
nicvargus
February 11, 2011 at 10:55am
Good points, but the real reason why there's no line in this video is even more simple. Apple didn't start activations until 12:00, every Verizon store started at 7:00am. If you're a big enough fan to wait in line for an iPhone, why would you do it at Apple? (There were easily about 40 people in the Verizon line at 6:45am in SF yesterday morning).
