Apple says 1 million iPhones sold during first weekend

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You are right on point. Sprint's Customer Service would not be a problem if I never needed them. Unfortunately, that isn't the way it is supposed to work. I need good customer service when I have a problem or a question. And my problems and questions may be different than yours. Sprint needs to be able to handle all types of questions. But they can't. Between sending jobs over seas and hiring the least common denominator to man their stores, they have developed a miserable, uneducated, rude, and sometimes dishonest support system. Their reputation for having bad customer service is well-deserved. Now if their phones or network could work relatively efficiently, I might not need them. But we know that doesn't happen either.

So bottom line is, Sprint Customer Service will improve as soon as everyone quits calling them. From the lines at the Apple Store and AT&T, it looks like Sprint's master plan is working.

It's totally true:

http://tinyurl.com/5u5lps

People are saying the the new iPhone has less battery life than the old iPhone because 3G and GPS consume more power, but the battery is actually more powerful than the old one, and more powerful than its competitors. If you want to ignore facts, I guess that is your prerogative. Some claim that the chart in the article was provided by Apple, when in fact it is the results of PC World's own tests.

The iPhone also has the added benefit of using wifi, which consumes far less than a 3G or even edge network with speeds faster than both. There are tons of third party options for mobile charging with the iPhone anyways. Obviously it is not that big of a deal to the millions who have already purchased the iPhone 3G.

Also, why don't you check out Mossberg's review of the Instinct:

"Samsung's Instinct Doesn't Ring True As an iPhone Clone"

http://tinyurl.com/4btlcv

I agree with Walt. It is a nice device, but it is no iPhone. The two things that set the iPhone apart are it's usability and of course the app store.

The iPhone's multi-touch interface is by far superior to any touch-screen phone made to date. This might change, but certainly not with the Instinct's relatively clunky UI.

The app store is what really sets the iPhone apart. Garmin and other GPS makers are preparing their software for use on the iPhone, which will blow the Instinct's navigator app out of the water (it will be just like having a dedicated GPS unit).

Also, games and other apps available to all iPhone users are far superior with a much wider selection. For example, multi-player wifi games are starting to hit the app store with titles like Scrabble and Texas Holdem, etc.

You also get the added benefit of useful programs such as Instant Messaging, a Guitar Tuner, Pandora and AOL radio, Shazam (an awesome app that can tell you any song you are listening to, just hold it up to the speaker for a few seconds, absolutely blew my mind!), a keyboard, level, and basically any useful application that its thousands of developers can dream up.

The iPhone OS has turned into a platform and consumers know that Apple will continue to update it while adding functionality. With Samsung, what you see is what you get. If you want your phone's software to be outdated in a year, buy an Instinct. Samsung will have an entirely different phone with different software at this point next year, where current iPhone owners will be able to upgrade for free (just as I did with my first gen iPhone!)

@Comparitive Sales

"I wonder how the iPhone and Instinct sales will compare after a few more weeks. That will be interesting to see."

Instinct did have a successful launch, but I noticed the Sprint store a couple doors down from Apple this weekend with NO customers in the store with a line of 200+ people waiting in front of Apple for the iPhone. Still lines at the Apple store today. I don't think the Instinct stands a chance.

Sprint USED to have call centers in more places around KC. I used to walk through one of them every day on the way to lunch.

Where did Sprint send all those people?

Alright you seem to think Sprint has tons of call centers in Missouri or the local area, when truth is they only have 2 call centers in Missouri period that handle Sprint Customer calls. Those being a Call Center in NKC and a Call Center in Farmington, MO. Neither of them are owned by Sprint, but are contracted out to a contracting company. Second of all Sprint's internal call centers are not contractors but actual Sprint employees and if you look at their stats vs vendor call centers the internal call centers are very helpful to the customer and are very knowledgable about what they talk about. Though people want to complain about Sprint's Customer service....I have had Sprint for 6 years and I have never once had a problem. I have had only one billing problem and it was corrected in one phone call to Sprint Customer Care. Second of all most people that call into Sprint call centers are typical uneducated consumers who one do not have a clue about the phone they bought, nor the plan they bought. They just see a phone that looks "cool" and buy it and sign up for whatever plan they are offered and then when they get home they realize "OMG, I dont have a flippin clue how to work this phone, let me call tech support." Or when they get their first bill, "OMG, my bill is $100, and I thought it was suppose to be only $20." Seriously people that complain about customer service of Sprint or any company for that matter are consumers that want everything fed to them, they are to lazy to educate themselves on pricing or the phones they buy of course they are going to have a terrible experience. They provide manuals for the phones people, they provide detail pricing example before signing a plan. Seriously get educated about what you buy and Customer Service is never a problem.

That's complete garbage, all the other reviews have said the battery life on the new iphone gets up to 4 hours on 3G. Even Apple hack Walt Mossberg says it has poor battery performance: http://smarthouse.com.au/Phones/Mobile/M4S7V2D2

What PC World doesn't tell you is that chart was put together and provided by Apple.

Also, last I checked you can't swap the battery on the iphone and the Instinct comes with "2".

I hope you lose you're job.

Learn how to spell, idiot.

Good ridens to you!

the people they hire on the phones that answer billing questions & I am not talking about the overseas reps but the local workforce the " contractors " that are hired from temp agencies in the KC area -- are Trash---- and do a poor job with customer service I am sure all they care about is getting a check and spending it on 20" rims & not resolving my issue, good ridens !! the campus will be a nice college one day

we wouldnt need to if some of the call centers here in the kc area hired people of credible worth vs. people that dont care

See

http://www.pcworld.com/article/148348/3g_iphones_mediocre_battery_life_still_beats_rivals.html

You know, Sprint hasn't exactly been angelic in keeping jobs in the area.

They need to do what they have to do to survive, and none of us are glad to see jobs leave KC, but they have farmed a lot of work out to domestic outsourcing, to IBM and EDS, previously Accenture and Slumberger. Many of these workers are domestic but in or from other parts of the country, and also to India as well.

The odd thing is, they knew this was going to be huge and Apple had a year to prepare for it..... and they still did not have enough servers on their iTunes platform to handle the load. Beware.... this is foresight into the future for iTunes, crashing because of "server overload."

I find it funny that people are more than happy to see Sprint go down and people lose jobs in the city and state. But they are the first to complain about jobs going overseas. Please explain the difference if you can. A job being lost in MO or KS is still lost to the states and impacts us all. Everyone losing jobs will be competing with you for existing jobs. Whether the job goes overseas or to another state its the same impact to the local economy. Those ex sprint employees that get on here and blast Sprint should really be worried if Sprint goes under. The employees that are will come and get your current job. You were let go for a reason.

he he he

this blog is full of people commenting about things they obviously don't know anything about. i don't work for sprint and don't love apple. this blog is a waste of time. i found it by accident, but won't be back. kc star why don't you require registration or rename it to a hater blog? not sure why you would have this labeled sprint or any other corp name.

You've hit the nail on the head. Probably not as you intended tho.

The problem with most people around here is that, "Either you're with us or against us!" I imagine those are the same people who would vote Bush in for a third term.

There is a ton of gray area here. Not to mention one is a phone and one is a company. Really, people should be putting the pressure on Samsung, etc to work on creating an equivalent phone. It's not bashing Sprint to say, "I like the iPhone." Again, that's the same logic our current administration has tried to use and it's failed miserably. Primarily due to the lack of logic used to make such statements.

"Turn off the comments" ... what? If something is too harsh or critical from your point of view - feel free not to respond or read further posts. If you're having an emotional response to someone's point of view and feel the need to restrict their speech then I would invite you to travel to a) N. Korea or b)1930's Germany.

Whatever, indeed.

The constant bickering between the Sprint "drones" and Apple "fanboys" about the "iPhoney" and "Endstink" hardly constitutes discussion in my book. This is like grade school recess.

The Sprint employees have been dispatched to try to whine and get the comments shut down I guess.

Listen, it's relevant to talk about the iPhone here. There's a posting about it. It's the competing model to the model Sprint will help revive its wireless business.

The iPhone is a great product. If the Instinct is better let's hear about it... don't try to stifle discussion because it doesn't favor you.

I agree on disabling the comments. Or at least require a registration. Funny thing is the other blogs on their site require a registration in order to comment, but this one allows anonymous comments.

It's really sad how much hate some people put into this blog. I've had bad customer service experiences with some companies, like Time Warner, but I don't scour the internet for Time Warner articles and wish for their demise in the comments section. I guess I can be thankful that my life has more meaning than some folks'.

I really think the KC Star needs to disable comments for the Sprint blog. Their are invariably either Sprint supporters cheering recent successes and touting Sprint or Sprint detractors coming in saying how bad news is the sign of Sprint's imminent demise. Neither are interesting, new, or informative.

Dear Santa,

I only want one thing for XMAS, a shiny new 32 gig iPhone.

I can't wait to see how many more Sprint customers bolted to AT&T during the 2nd and 3rd quarters.

Most of the hard core iPhone and iPod people are waiting for the 32 gig phone to come out this XMAS. You think Sprint customers are leaving by the millions now, wait til XMAS.

So there goes the entire year for stuffy, old toad, narrow minded, Sprint corp.

What does cheap "black" labor have to do with this discussion?... I don't believe there is such a thing. Trying to marginalized black folks shows your ignorance. For the record Indians are not a race of people, just like Americans are not, just like the British are not, etc.

That's less than the 1st iphone and less than the Instinct which sold 240,000 units over the opening weekend in the U.S. Also, those figures will be be very disappointing to ATT investors who hoped the 3G iphone would beat the 1st iphone, it didn't. ATT isn't slated to make a profit until 2010 due to the revenue sharing deal ATT and Apple signed. Now that date will most likely be pushed to 2012...

What does a persons nationality have to do with it? If that matters to you, does a persons skin color matter as well? Are you going to complain about cheap black labor?

What's racist about writing Cheap Indian Labor?

Cheap = Inexpensive
Indian = Person from India
Labor = Work of any kind

I guess it hurts your feelings to know you are being paid much, much less than the American in the cube beside you, doing the same job.

Handsets still intransit not truly "sold"
From FORTUNE:
In a report to clients issued a few hours before Apple’s announcement, Munster had estimated that Apple had sold about 450,000 iPhones worldwide and that it would take Apple at least 17 days to hit the one million mark.
One explanation for the discrepancy may have to do with how Apple counts sales. Sales at Apple Stores are recorded at the register. But sales to its partners — in this case, AT&T and the overseas carriers — are recorded when the devices leave the loading docks in Asia. These phones are still intransit and not actually sold to consumers, however, Apple still counts them as "sold".

I don't know what cities Verizon and AT&T are based out of, but I wonder if their home town papers run blogs dedicated to them as well and allow the same type of vile comments (cheap indian labor) we see here?

Not a former employee. Just a repeat customer who tried to support the local company and left multiple times frustrated and beyond unsatisfied.

Funny how anything negative said about Sprint is labeled as "hater" comments. I have a large number of friends and family that work for Sprint and have for years. I'd like to see the company succeed - thrive. Unfortunately Sprint insists on continually providing poor service and lackluster support to their subscribers. Anything they've done in the last year to reverse this is a knee-jerk response to the abysmal to their customer satisfaction numbers.

To me it's more interesting that when someone promotes the iPhone there are immediate and predictable emotional responses from the Sprint faithful. I appreciate being loyal if you're an employee or a satisfied customer - the later of the two is a rare find. If the iPhone were on Sprint I'd be ultimately disappointed b/c the impeccable user experience of the iPhone would be running on a network that drops calls throughout it's "hometown" of KC.

It's not that people want to hate on Sprint and for our friends and family members to lose their jobs. It's that Sprint has had so many snafu's in recent years (and I'm talking about the past 6-8yrs) that one must wonder why they're so poorly run? Why are they making all the wrong moves and putting my friends and family's jobs in jeopardy? What's more interesting is that AT&T doesn't identify themselves exclusively with the iPhone but Sprint is bound and determined to identify themselves with the Instinct. There are so many marketing errors involved with this decision alone that I can't begin to start naming them here. Suffice to say - hope the Instinct performs well enough to stand out from the "knockoff" label it appears to deserve.

Good luck, Sprint. If I wasn't consistently overcharged - dropping/missing calls - and berated by your "customer service" I'd still be on your network.

That number is valid for 2007 sales data, not 2008 launch from this past week end.

I couldn't agree more. The hatred that is allowed to flow on this blog is disappointing and should just be flagged for removal.

Odd, this is a post regarding the iPhone and the haters just can't get away from the desire to see over 20,000 (not 13k) employees on the street in Kansas City. Obviously the haters that patrol this blog, like sharks out for blood, are former employees that got themselves fired or simply have no place else to vent their lost cause.

Sprint is a great company, has been for many years, and will be for may more to come, and does more for this community than anyone truly understands. So stop wanting to see a local economy take a hit from it's main employer and go under taking so much with it. If that's your only wish and hope then your simply calling judgement on yourself. Look beyond your own little puddle of disappointment and anger and think of someone else for ONCE in your pathetic life.

You want to see Sprint just go away? Sorry to disappoint, Sprint will be here long after your counseling has been successful, your hate has been buried, and your pathetic arguments proven to be just that.

225K devices sold in U.S. over the weekend.

Why all the racist comments about "cheap Indian labor"? This blog is quickly becoming nothing less about Sprint and more about hatred. Congratulations KCStar.

Apple sold 1 million handsets in first weekend - world wide. How many of that number was actually sold in the US? Previous release took 74 days to sell 1 million in US - without complete data a comparison of how well the sales are selling to the previous release is not possible. Sounds more like Apple is trying to put positive spin on things.

Funny how someone on here was saying that sprint did not bring much to the table as far as our local economy.. Read the article in CNN http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2008/snapshots/PL2053775.html
Does it mention any other company and why OP is #9 on best small city's to live... Hmmmm funny.

Its not CDMA or GSM. Handset manufactures have models that work on CDMA or GSM and some models that work on both.

You wouldn't know that because you work for Sprint and don't know jack about wireless.

Furthermore, in case you haven't read the news in 6 months, customers, employees, partners and vendors are bolting from Sprint in mass.

No one wants to be on a sinking ship.

13k of Sprint employess local to KC? Let's break it down...

How many are cheap Indian labor? 4k, 5k?

How many are non-head of house hold? 3k? 4?

How many of the estimated remaining 7k employess Sprint employees are spending "loads of money" in KC when they are under the constant threat of layoffs (I count 6 consecutive years of layoffs and now its layoffs every quarter. If they are smart they are banking their money, not spending it. They should know Sprint is going under based on the talent that has already left. And no, I did not get laid off from Sprint.

If Sprint closed the door tomorrow I doubt you would see even a blip on the local economy.

And lastly, Sprint PCS was built by out of state consultants that by and large, left the area years ago.

The pervious blog is wrong about charges for using GPS. I called AT&T to confirm that GPS is free and unlimited as a data service and I am correct. Data is $30.00 for unlimited service. It is nuts however, that AT&T charges extra for text messages.... I had that feature turned off... 1 megs worth of text would net AT&T $1300 at 20 cents per message....
I got the 450 minutes with unlimited data and expect the bill to run about $80 per month with tax.... iPhone 3G is great!
GPS allows Google maps to show a blue pin that exactly locates you and gives a starting point to map your route to any address you type in..... The TOM TOM, Garmin type voice system is in the works for iPhone.... stay tuned!

For those of you who comtinue to assert Sprint turned down the iPhone lets set the record straight one more time. There was no "turn down" because there was no opportunity. Why would Apple want to make CDMA phones when 80% of the world's wireless network POPs are GSM? It doesn't make sense. Odd how Steve Jobs and Apple get so much credit for being super smart but then you claim they were on the verge of doing something monumentally stupid like putting their ace-in-the-hole on the Sprint CDMA network. It just would not enable them to caputre the most market share. So stop speculating, stop assuming, and stop spreading false stories representing them as fact. You don't know. It is simply NOT true.

When Sprint leaves KC and all the jobs go with it (there asre still 13K or so) you will also see a ripple effect becasue there will be 13k fewer people spending money in your grocery stores, department stores, eateries, coffee shops, and buying homes. The micro-economy will tank further. Obviouslly you woke up this morning and wanted to type but had little between the ears so you just spewed garbage. Learn something, then you can offer intelligent comments.

I can't tell from this article what was their fastest selling phone was.

Also, reference to "sales record" for iPhone doesn't make much sense. Who said it was a record and why does that say anything about multimedia phones in general? If it does say something about multimedia phones, what does a Sprint press release that one multimedia phone outsold other multimedia phones have to do with multimedia phones v. other phones.

I wonder how the iPhone and Instinct sales will compare after a few more weeks. That will be interesting to see.

Just got the phone this weekend, pretty cool. Very surpised! I just switched from sprint to AT&T. Its really an amazing phone. Theres not much I can say neagtive about AT&T and the i phone, I have been a loyal Sprint subscriber for 9 years. I have to say, it is a very nice change.

You had your chance at the iPhone but were too dumb to sign the deal. Instead you bought Nextel and ran it in the ground because the network is too complicated for you to operate.

Now you are loosing customers by the millions.

1.6 million signing bonus to new CFO, another dumb move.

500k retention bonus to CTO of Xohm in spite of embarrassing failure to launch and loosing 49% control of company.

You continue to use the Sprint brand name which will forever be associated with poor quality.

Mention Sprint to anyone in Kansas City and they cringe. Most everyone in KC has been burned one way or another by Sprint

So long Sprint, Kansas City don't need your kind around here anymore.

Nothing is free with AT&T when it comes to the iPhone.

Apple’s new 3G iPhone released Friday has been highly publicized for its price cut, but less advertised are the various ways in which AT&T plans to make money out of the popular phone’s new features.

iPhone fans might have assumed that the highly anticipated and publicized GPS function would be included in the data plan.

Wrong. The Dallas-based phone company, the largest U.S. carrier, will charge subscribers $10 a month to add the much-ballyhooed GPS function, according to an AT&T representative Friday.

The phone's up-front cost is cheaper, down to $199 or $299 from its previous $399 or $499 price tag, depending on the phone’s capacity. What is also widely known is that price cuts were accompanied by an increase in AT&T’s data and text messaging plans, which raised the total cost of the phone over the previous one.

AT&T's unlimited plan offers endless talk-time minutes and data for $129. For $20, iPhone users can get unlimited text messaging--twice what it costs with T-Mobile--but that still leaves out the GPS.

Total cost for everything, unlimited? $159.99, plus tax, per month is what it takes to have the sleek device in your pocket and find your way around town, with style.

For those who value their wallet more than style, there is always Helio Ocean which offers GPS, 3G, and unlimited calling and messaging for only $99.

Posted from RedHerring.com

Don't forget though that Sprint has unlimited everything for $99 per month, enjoy being gouged by AT&T and Apple folks.

The iPhone is slick. Now the AT&T network needs to follow suit. Right now, you have a Ferrari stuck in first gear because the GPRS/Edge network is so slow. Once they rollout HSDPA nationwide the iPhone will be a much better value. Until then, you'll have to use the iPhone at hotspots to truly get highspeed data.

The iphone really is a fantastic device.

I never would have bought one myself, but I received one as a gift and I can't believe how convenient it is to have all these features together at once: large volume storage device, music player, organizer, phone, and web browser that works from anywhere.

A week ago I would have scoffed at the thought of me carrying around an iphone, but now I don't think I want to be without it.

And what is with the "captcha validation" on this site? I'm not blind or anything, but it's almost impossible to get a comment to submit even if you type the phrase right.