Apple's iPhone with 10-30% market share? I don't think so

Another survey with interesting numbers: according to this one, 9% of all US consumers are "very" or "somewhat" likely to buy Apple's iPhone. Funny that: The iPhone is initially only available on Cingular/AT+T (cf here), which has a market share of 28%, so just about 1/3 of all Cingular subscribers (or c. 19 million) would have to be interested in buying an iPhone.

Folks, buy Apple stock now. But then (screeech): Apple said they were only targeting 1% of the market, which makes it 1m devices, and AT+T's COO says they have already 1m inquiries ... this would lead 18 million willing Cingular subs + everyone outside the US without the sleek and coveted thing. Not so good...

Isn't all this somewhat weird? The phone costs $499 and $599 respectively (at least according to this), and 1/3 of a carrier's subscribers going for one of the top-priced options would be contrary to everything we've seen so far. Rather unlikely, I'd say. So: if the price was dropped to below $300, an additional 10% would buy the 4GB model and a staggering 20% the 8GB model. Make that 30% market share then - with one device. Woah.

The blurb concludes that Apple should exceed its sales goals for, wait a minute, 2008 (sic!) and then closes with the beautiful caveat "provided the device lives up to consumer expectations". Amen!

If Apple gets it right (which I hope as I like them), then 1m devices in 2007 would not be a bad start (considering it is one carrier and one country), in particular as high-priced as they are. Assuming that they could in fact open the pipeline for higher demand, we could well be seeing one of the top handsets in the market place (so-called blockbuster handsets regularly are between 2-3.5% share of all handsets on a carrier). That would be impressive enough.


Then they would only have to add 3G, I suppose...