Apple announced on June 16, just one day after the opening of pre-orders for the iPhone 4, that it had recorded no less than 600.000 pre-orders, a record figure for a single day but a figure that most likely represents less than half of the sales that Apple could register this weekend. The information comes from the American analyst Gene Munster who takes into account the 600.000 pre-orders made on the first day plus the other hundreds of thousands made until yesterday plus the people who will go to buy the phone directly from the Apple store.
"Our best guess is that Apple reserves about half of the units for pre-orders (mail delivery and in-store pick up) and half for in-store purchases (walk-ins), implying total sales for the launch (including the 600k already announced for online and first three days) of between 1.0m to 1.5m. "This would be the biggest iPhone launch (compared to 3GS at 1m)."
However, AT&T has announced that it will sell iPhone 4 directly from stores only from June 29, so probably the above estimates are exclusively for Apple stores that will sell iPhone 4 directly from stores from June 24. Last year Apple sold 1 million iPhone 3GS terminals on the launch weekend, and this year it will surely reach at least 1.5 million given the enormous interest in the new terminal.
