Developer Estimates That Most Verizon iPhones Were Sold To Existing iPhone Customers

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Are you familiar with Instapaper? It’s an iOS app that lets you save web pages for reading later, and it’s one of the most popular paid apps on the App Store. Because the app’s popularity is so constant, developer Marco Arment says he’s able to correlate spikes in his own sales to spikes in iPhone/iPod Touch sales. He says there was no sales spike for the Verizon iPhone, leading to speculation  that mostly existing iPhone users are the ones who bought all the early Verizon iPhones.

Arment says that he saw no huge jump in sales in the weeks following the Verizon iPhone. We’ve already covered this idea a bit. We told you about how just two people waited in line for the Verizon iPhone in Minneapolis. Another report featured leaked information said that Verizon iPhone sales weren’t much higher than AT&T sales.

Arment writes on his blog that he has three reasons as for why there would be no spike in sales for the Verizon iPhone. Either very few Verizon iPhones have been sold, Verizon iPhone owners aren’t buying the same apps as AT&T owners, or most Verizon iPhone owners already owned the iPhone. He believes that the last option is what we’re actually seeing.

As I’ve speculated on this site before, it was unrealistic to expect a mass exodus from AT&T to Verizon on day one. Early Termination Fees are expensive and folks won’t be crazy about buying the same phone they already own on another network. I think if you’ll look back in, say, 12 months, you’ll see a much more dramatic shift from AT&T to Verizon.

(Image Credit: Marco.org)