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Apple Streamlines iPhone 3G Sales with Online Signups

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Apple has started offering users a way to sign up for AT&T service online prior to visiting an Apple Store. The online tool allows you to:

1. Enter your billing information.
2. Review eligibility and pricing.
3. Select your AT&T rate plan.

Once done, you simply need to visit an Apple Retail store to complete your iPhone purchase. This new "at home" option generated some speculation over the weekend. As it turns out, this still requires in-store activation of your iPhone upon purchase.

The most recent analyst numbers predict that Apple will sell 5 million iPhones in Q4 2008 which could bring the total close to Apple's state goal of 10 million iPhones sold during calendar year 2008.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/09/23/apple-streamlines-iphone-3g-sales-with-online-signups/
Well, it's a start.

Given that buying iPhone Edge was my best phone buying experience and buying iPhone 3G was my worst phone buying experience, and very close to my worst buying experience ever. I've bought cars from dealerships with less hassle. They had us stand out in the Florida sun for 1.25 hours, even though I had showed up that morning to wait in a DIFFERENT line to get my little line pass thing.

You still have to go into a store to activate it...
 
tny said:
Does this suggest that the associated rumor that the iPhone 3G will go to 32 GB *soon* was correct?
Click to expand...

No. not at all. That rumor was completely wrong.

arn
 
BLACK MAC said:
Give it up! There is no 32GB until MacWorld or the next iPhone due out next summer.
Click to expand...

Who needs 32GB? I don't want to be flamed, but with SimplifyMedia out, and with most of us 24/7 accessible to 3G/Edge/Wifi, why have your phone full of songs. I have an 8GB iPhone and only sync 100 of my favorite songs. I use SimplifyMedia for the rest.
 
I take it to mean the morning lines outside of Apple stores are basically gone at this point. Apple wouldn't have implemented something like this until the line-waiting part was over with.
 
The goal was 10mil iPhones by the end of 2008, not in 2008 it self. This means they include all the phones sold in 2007 too.
 
Well I haven't seen many lines nowadays, so a bit late AT&T/Apple?

armaster73 said:
Strange that this website to pre-qualify (that requires your SSN) isn't even encrypted using HTTPS?
Click to expand...

Oh great we are all entering information into a phishing site. No accountability if someone decides to steal your info… :eek:
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I like this. It is good to see that they are trying to get the kinks in the process ironed out.
 
3g

SirOmega said:
I take it to mean the morning lines outside of Apple stores are basically gone at this point. Apple wouldn't have implemented something like this until the line-waiting part was over with.
Click to expand...

Lines................what line!! I was in the Apple's Chicago flagship store on Michigan Ave last Thursday at lunch time and there were more pesky Apple Sales Associates than customers at the iPhone table display. Hell, there were more folk at the iPod tables come to think of it.

You wanna by an iPhone, no line in Chicago!
 
sjjordan said:
Who needs 32GB? I don't want to be flamed, but with SimplifyMedia out, and with most of us 24/7 accessible to 3G/Edge/Wifi, why have your phone full of songs. I have an 8GB iPhone and only sync 100 of my favorite songs. I use SimplifyMedia for the rest.
Click to expand...

"Who needs more than 640k of memory".

( although Gates really didn't say this the way people think )
 
This is a great addition (had I any interest in AT&T).

I will recommend this process to a friend thinking about getting an iPhone as he has somewhat shaky credit, and would save some of the stress of dealing with this at the store!
 
The linked article appears to confuse Apple's FY third quarter with the CY third quarter. Apple forecasted ten million iPhone sales during the calendar year '08. Their fiscal year '08 ends in September. The subsequently linked Fortune article makes this somewhat clearer. If Apple sells five million iPhones in FY Q4, then to make their ten million CY 2008 goals they'd need to sell only 2.6 million more in the last calendar quarter. This should be a piece of cake.
 
I don't know why people had such a problem with their in-store activation. I must have had an amazing specialist. I was in and out in about 10 minutes, and that was with purchasing two phones, one of which was a new line. The longest part was when we had to call AT&T to have my FAN number removed, since I wasn't sure if I needed to since I had recently had it changed, so my discount wasn't active yet. The people who I met in line were in there a bit longer than I was, but not by much. And this was after standing in line for a couple hours.

I also didn't have either of my phones unboxed either, though, so that may have cut down a lot on the time. He scanned them, and associated them with my phone numbers, but they were still wrapped in celophane when I left the store.
 
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