iPhone sales - activations = stupid speculation

So after the roller coaster ride that Apple stockholders have enjoyed the last couple of days lets look a little closer at the numbers. AT&T reported on Tuesday that they activated 146,000 iPhones. This sent Apple stock plummeting as it fell short of the somewhat ridiculous expectations of analysts that ran as high as 500,000 phones sold. Apple came out the next day and announced that they had sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours, a figure almost 85% higher than AT&T's activations number. The speculation on why the discrepancy existed has gone far afield, as some argue that a combination of activation problems and people seeking to sell the phone on Ebay might be the issues. Although we're sure that both of these items contributed, the truth is that there is no way that there were 124,000 activation problems + disappointed ebay sellers. People seem to be missing the obvious reason for the discrepancy, online sales. Phones sold through Apple's online store during the period would obviously not be activated by AT&T as buyers would not receive them for at least a week, if not longer. Although we understand that its fun to whine about activation problems and speculate about how broken hearted Ebay sellers were, lets have some common sense here.