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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Apple short on iPhones

By Connie Guglielmo
Bloomberg News Service

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

There was an iPhone rush Friday at the AT&T store on Kapi'olani. Outlets in 10 states, including Hawai'i, were sold out by Monday.

JOAQUIN SIOPACK | The Honolulu Advertiser

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SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Inc. ran out of iPhones at more than half its stores less than a week after introducing the combination iPod music player and handset in the U.S.

Buyers emptied outlets in 10 states, including Hawai'i, with 95 of 164 stores reporting sellouts by Monday night, according to Apple's Web site. Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple started selling two models of the iPhone, priced at $499 and $599, on June 29.

Shoppers may have taken home as many as 700,000 iPhones over the weekend, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst David Bailey has estimated, twice his initial projection. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs has sought to use the connection to the iPod business, which pulls in about $10 billion in revenue a year, to reach his goal of selling 10 million phones in 2008.

Besides Hawai'i, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington all sold off their allotment of phones, leaving buyers to check with AT&T Inc. Apple lists whether stores are out on its Web site.

AT&T sold out of the phone in almost all its 1,800 stores, with "just a handful" of locations keeping the handset in stock, spokesman Mark Siegel said in an interview yesterday. San Antonio-based AT&T is the exclusive wireless service provider for the device. iPhone users need to sign up for a two-year contract.

Apple sells the iPhone for more than double its manufacturing costs, with profit margins of more than 55 percent excluding logistics and royalties, industry researcher ISuppli Corp. said in a report yesterday. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

There's a two- to four-week wait for customers who order online from Apple. The phone sold over the Internet for a premium through online auction service eBay Inc., with an average price of $705 and the highest at $12,500. People have sold about 4,500 iPhones through eBay since the debut.

The iPhone broke AT&T's opening-weekend records, selling more in three days than phones such as Motorola Inc.'s Razr did in their first month, according to spokesman Michael Coe.

While the first iPhone sales will be counted in second-quarter results, they will benefit AT&T in the third quarter as enthusiasm spreads for the gadget, said Todd Rosenbluth, an analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York.

"The initial buyers brought it home, and now they're talking about it, showing it to friends," said Rosenbluth, who has a "hold" rating on AT&T shares.

Analysts don't expect the iPhone to have a significant effect on sales this year or next because Apple plans to recognize revenue from the devices over two years, rather than in the quarter they're sold. Apple, whose third quarter ended June 30, will report results this month.

AT&T's Edge data network, which allows the iPhone and other devices to access the Internet, crashed for several hours Monday in a "very limited" outage, Siegel also said yesterday.