Report: AT&T iPhone Users Making Up Majority of Verizon iPhone 4 Sales

From DailyTech: After years of hype, when the iPhone 4 finally hit Verizon earlier in the month it underperformed on launch day, and posted generally lackluster first-week sales (in a small sample of high-profile Apple stores). Now, another unofficial measure of its performance has also proven to be disappointing.

Marco Arment, founder of the app Instapaper and one-time lead developer of Tumblr, posted some interesting findings on his website.

Because of Instapaper's steady ranking within the App Store (between #2-#5), any significant sales jumps can be extrapolated to reflect upon the entire App Store.

"I see huge spikes whenever there’s a new iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad released, whenever they become available in a major new country, or whenever there’s a major reason for people to buy a lot of them (like the holidays)," Arment writes.

The last three major spikes since the start of November have been on November 11, the day after a "major new version"; December 12, the day after Instapaper was featured in a prominent New York Times piece; and, for obvious reasons, Christmas Day.

From mid-January to February 18, though, there have been no significant sales spikes in an otherwise moderate month, despite the launch of the Verizon iPhone on February 10.

Arment speculate that the Verizon iPhone will experience gradual but steady growth, rather than the huge initial spikes that AT&T iPhone launches traditionally saw. "Most people willing and able to [break their contract] for the iPhone were also willing and able to jump carriers to get an iPhone on AT&T sometime since its release nearly four years ago," Arment writes. Meanwhile, most "casual Verizon buyers" are going to wait for their contracts to expire before they show up to buy the phone unsubsidized en masse.

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