Apple claims 270,000 iPhone sales in first 30 hours

Stock markets are baffling things. A bunch of speculators (aka ‘financial analysts’) make up huge sales figures for the first weekend iPhone of sales in America. Apple’s share price goes up. iPhone operator AT&T then issues its ‘activation’ numbers of 146,000 for the handset’s first day-and-a-half, and Apple’s share price drops 6%. Speculators shuffle feet and mumble.

Apple then issues its own iPhone sales figures, saying that 270,000 units went through the tills in the first 30 hours on-sale, and backs that up with the highest-ever quarterly Mac sales, a 42% climb in laptop sales, quarter profits of over $800 million (£400m), and almost 10m more iPods sold… But the company’s share price stays static. Perhaps that’s as good a result as Apple could have hoped for, in the face of an almost inevitable post-iPhone hype backlash.

(Apple share price here on Google. Sales numbers via MacRumors)

Update 27th July: The markets have caught up and Apple’s share price has now bounced back.

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