Apple could sell up to 4 million iPhone 4s this weekend. It is the last Apple jewel Steve Jobs worked on before having to leave the company due to the illness that led to his death. From today the new Apple branded smartphone is on sale in the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan. But it is also available in Europe: in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. In Italy we will have to wait until the end of the month to be able to get our hands on the latest iPhone.
Most analysts estimate that the Cupertino company will sell between 2 and 3 million smartphones this weekend, but Carl Howe, of the Yankee Group has gone too far declaring that it could even sell 4 million units.
The iPhone 4s does not attract the public only for its improved performance: sentimental reasons should not be underestimated. In fact, many are standing in long queues to be the first to own the symbol of the end of the Jobs era. In Manhattan a boy in front of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue said: “It's the iphone for Steve, in his memory”. In Tokyo, in the Ginza business district, at 8 in the morning there were more than 800 hungry for apples.
Apple in the second quarter conquered the first place on the podium of best-selling smartphones: 20,3 million iPhones. Slightly more than arch-rival Samsung, which reached 19,6 million units sold in the same period. The clashes between the two companies do not seem to want to decrease. However yesterday, in Australia, one of many battles on patents was won by the giant of Cupertino.
Apple shares have risen more than 10% in the past week, driven by speculation around the iPhone 4s. Yesterday on Wall Street the stock closed at 408,43 dollars: the number one in the world, with a capitalization of 378,7 billion dollars (Exxon, silver medal, was worth 371,3 billion yesterday).
Read the article on Bloomberg Businessweek
