iPhone Gains; Palm, BlackBerry Pains

by Scott Martin on 14 July 2008, 19:54

Categories: Computers - General news - Magazine - Internet - Finance
Topics: apple , palm , RIM , iPhone 3G

 

Those hours-long lines at Apple Stores all weekend logged hefty sales for the Mac maker.

Apple on Monday said it sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs between Friday morning when it went on sale and Sunday. That compares with the 74 days it took to sell the first one million iPhones.

The gains come at the expense of other phone makers, according to a Morgan Keegan analyst.

“We view this as representing the latest in a series of negative data point for traditional handset vendors,” Tavis McCourt, who doesn’t hold Apple shares but whose firm makes a market in Apple securities, wrote Monday in a report.

The analyst estimated that 30 percent or more of those waiting in line at the Apple Store in Nashville were upgrading from an older iPhone.

“BlackBerry and Palm ownership was sparse,” McCourt wrote.

Apple shares closed higher, gaining $1.30, or 0.75 percent, to $173.88. Rival Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, lost $1.80, or 1.64 percent, at $107.99; Palm lost $0.11, or 2 percent, to $5.42.

The Mac maker also said that the App Store has delivered over 10 million downloads of applications to users of its iPod touch and iPhones since launch. The App Store has over 800 applications, 200 of which are free.