Apple on Monday said it had sold five million new iPhones just three days after the phone’s release, beating first-weekend sales of its predecessor, the iPhone 4S, by about one million, but still missing some analysts’ forecasts.
Still, the number sold over the weekend is about as many smartphones as some competitors, like Nokia, can say they’ve sold over all.
Apple said that demand for the iPhone 5 exceeded expectations, and many early orders of the smartphone have been scheduled for October. Though weekend sales of the iPhone 5 exceeded Apple’s expectations, they came below some analysts’ estimates. Gene Munster, a financial analyst with Piper Jaffray, had predicted eight million sales the first weekend. He made his guess by counting the number of people waiting in line outside some Apple stores and comparing it to the number of people in line last year.
Though five million iPhones wasn’t in line with Mr. Munster’s algebraic guesswork, the number shows that the iPhone has not lost momentum despite the wave of new smartphones recently introduced by Apple’s competitors. Nokia, HTC, Samsung and Motorola Mobility each unveiled new smartphones this month, but most of them failed to release their phones before the iPhone 5 went on sale.
Nokia, a former industry leader, faces an uphill battle. The company has sold only about seven million of its new Lumia phones since they were released in November, said Jan Dawson, an analyst with Ovum, the research firm.
“It’s just a reminder of how far ahead Apple is of pretty much everyone else here,” Mr. Dawson said. He added that Samsung is the one company that sells smartphones in similar quantities, but across many different models of phones. Also, the iPhone is the only smartphone that sells out so quickly.
The strong early sales of the new iPhone also suggest that, despite widespread criticism of the new maps software included with the phone, enthusiasm for Apple’s phone has not waned.
In early trading, shares of Apple were down 1.4 percent at $690.68.
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