Sprint made a big miscalculation when it initially released the first-day sales numbers for the new HTC EVO 4G smartphone, the highly anticipated Android device that has been positioned by many as the first real competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Originally, Sprint announced that the total number of devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.
Today, however, Sprint is saying its original report was in error. Sales numbers were actually in line with the number of Instinct and Pre devices sold over the first three days on the market combined, not greater.
Although the original figures were erroneously reported, Sprint says the numbers for EVO are still good. Launch day sales are six times greater than those for the Samsung Instinct and twice that of the Palm Pre.
In response to both the announcement and further research, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk told Reuters that he was cutting his estimate of first weekend sales to 150,000 units from the earlier estimate of 250,000 to 350,000. He also said that calls placed to 20-plus stores indicated inventory shortages, so that number is not expected to rise much further during the first week of sales.
New Number: Not Bad, but Not Breath-Taking…
Still, 150,000 isn’t a bad number – it just might not be as earth-shattering as once thought. To put it in comparison with other recent smartphone launches, it’s better than the Droid, which sold 100,000 units its first weekend, and far better than the Palm Pre, which sold an estimated 50,000 units its launch weekend. It even holds up fairly well against the launch of the original iPhone, which sold an estimated 270,000 units, which was similarly on one carrier in one country (the U.S). However, the iPhone’s number didn’t include Sunday sales, which were on the start of a new quarter. Counting those too may mean that Apple sold as many as 400,000 units when the original iPhone launched. Later iPhone revisions, including the iPhone 3G, sold more than a million units during their first weekends, but those sales included additional countries outside the U.S. and multiple carriers, so it’s not as fair of a comparison.
That being said, the new EVO has already attracted its legion of fans, thanks not only to its rich feature set but also its base operating system, Google Android, a mobile OS which offers several features the newly renamed Apple mobile OS, iOS, does not. Still, the EVO may not be the so-called “iPhone killer” many had hoped for, mainly due to battery life concerns that even has high-profile tech bloggers like TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan recommending against its purchase.
