Apple claims 270,000 iPhone sold

Apple has just released their second quarter earnings report, and amongst the details released is a figure for the number of iPhones sold; 270,000. Although this is well off from the figures that Analysts were quoting (of over half a million), bear in mind that this is for only one quarter, which ended on the 30th. So that's 270,000 iPhones sold in about 1 day, and 146,000 iPhones activated. Why the difference between the two? There are two reasons; the difficulty that many users had activating their iPhones, and the fact that a lot of users bought their iPhones and then waited to activate them. Many users weren't able to activate their iPhones because of the problems that AT&T experienced, and many were waiting for numbers to be ported from other networks, or were waiting for contracts with other providers to end.

And Apple seem optimistic on the way the iPhone is selling; they claimed in the conference call that they are hoping to sell the millionth iPhone in September, and to sell 10 million by the end of 2008.

Another interesting thing from Apple's results is the way they are calculating the profits from the iPhone; instead of counting every sale at once, they are spreading the sales over eight quarters, because of the way that they are getting a percentage of the subscription fees that AT&T charge. Although Apple declined to comment on how much they are getting from AT&T, they claim to have only had $5 million of income from the iPhone so far, but they have $180 million of deferred revenue over the next 8 quarters from the iPhones already sold before the quarter ends.

If you want to see more details from the call, TUAW has a liveblog, and Apple's own details are here.