Apple sells 525,000 iPhones at launch

Los Angeles (CA) – Apple has sold 525,000 cellphones during the iPhone’s launch weekend, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

"Shoppers snatched up about 525,000 of the devices at Apple and AT&T stores from Friday’s launch through Sunday, told Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, the newspaper. She noted that “half of the Apple stores on the West Coast” ran out of supply on Friday ; AT&T’s 1800 stores were believed to have sold their available iPhones by Saturday.

Exact supply numbers were kept confidential. However, reports indicated that most Apple stores had about 500 phones available, while availability in AT&T stores was closer to 100. Activation issues appeared to have been the biggest hurdle during the launch weekend : Chowdhry said that the “the load was more than the [AT&T] system was designed to handle.”

Market research firm Piper Jaffray came up with similar sales estimates and told news.com that about 500,000 iPhones were sold between Friday and Sunday. If Global Equities Research and Piper Jaffray are right, then Apple has sold about 5% of the the iPhones the company plans to sell in the next 12 months (10 million).