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Verizon Says Short iPhone Lines Due to Strong Online Sales, Staggered Rollout

antonchigurh said:
I am not locked into a contract, but why would I enter a new 2 year contract for a phone that will likely be outdated in 4 months? I WILL switch to VZW when the next generation iPhone is released and I think there are a huge number of people in my situation.
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+1

It is easy to hide behind "on-line" shroud, but there is no way to hide the obvious, visible empty stores.

It was one of the ignorant moves by Apple. Assuming, consumers are completely dumb and will buy soon outdated phone. Wait, you can not even resell it, CDMA is going to be dead before you know it, and the rest of the world is GSM.

"We listened to what VZ customers wanted" - daah, what length yours ear channels are, took only 4 short years to hear it.
 
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I was in the first set of pre orders on Verizon when i got my iphone 4 and in my opinion Verizon most likely did quite well with pre orders however the actual release date was a thinner crowd because most people who are on Verizon just made a preorder. another factor is some people are probably waiting until the next iphone release and they aren't buying the iphone 4 and the people who have iphone 4's on AT&T are locked into their contract so its a costly jump to Verizon.
 
facepalms abound

AnalyzeThis said:
It is easy to hide behind "on-line" shroud, but there is no way to hide the obvious, visible empty stores.
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Who's trying to hide anything? What idiots expected lines in physical stores when you could get it way earlier ordering online? When the UPS driver delivered my iphone (bought from apple) she knew what it was and said she had a bunch more for our small neighborhood. My wife got her iphone from Verizon which came in a bigger unidentifiable box, so the UPS driver only saw about half the phones, assuming apple and verizon sold equal numbers.

You can always claim some ridiculously overstated expectation for sales, but by all accounts Apple sold a lot of Verizon iphones. It's amazing there are people so desperate to pretend it's some kind of abject failure. Same thing with iAds expanding. People manager to bend over backwards trying to invent controversy for apple.

AnalyzeThis said:
Assuming, consumers are completely dumb and will buy soon outdated phone.
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Every phone will be "soon outdated". Likewise every CPU, graphics card, browser download. This isn't Wargames, it's the opposite - the dumbest move is to sit around with your typewriter because you're afraid of technology progressing.

AnalyzeThis said:
Wait, you can not even resell it, CDMA is going to be dead before you know it, and the rest of the world is GSM.
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"Verizon will only be supporting CDMA for about 4-8 more years, only an idiot would buy a CDMA phone!"
As if any but a small number of people actually resell their phone anyway, so that's a doubly-huge stretch of a whine.

And how does "the rest of the world" matter to the majority of americans who live and travel in the US where they get better CDMA signal than GSM? Both will be obsolete soon. Who cares, we need phones that actually work NOW, not 2-3 years from now.
 
Rocketman said:
As AT&T coverage and signal strength equals or exceeds Verizon's in 2012 with LTE
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Meanwhile, ATT's LTE in 2012 will be non-existent.

By the way, Verizon being prepared to handle heavy traffic online to pre-order and more when launched is heavily preferred and more comfortable than being an ATT customer who gets pissed off when their site cant operate correctly and must wait, with the possibility of not being able to get one, at an apple store or att store line to get an iPhone.

Verizon > ATT gg.
 
It all depended on the market, where I live AT&T only has 3G in one city (Grand Rapids, MI) and in about a 50 mile radius there is only edge. I live about 30 miles from Grand Rapids and only travel there about once a week, most of the time I'm at home, work, or the other major city in the area, Kalamazoo, which is only edge. So where I'm at AT&T sucks so bad I can't even begin to describe it. In Kalamazoo, it's not hard to find an Verizon iPhone, but the stores definitely don't have an over abundance. On launch day I chose to go to Grand Rapids where if you're in the city AT&T is fine, but crap once you leave, so there were no lines and the stores had tons of iPhones.

I'd rather have slower 3G everywhere rather than just in one city, and believe it or not I CAN MAKE PHONE CALLS!!!!!
 
Did Verizon and Apple really think people were going to turn out in droves for a phone that will be upgraded in 4 months? :confused:
 
Salacion said:
Anyone else see this as an excuse?
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That was my thought too. But you also have to take into account people waiting for the AT&T accounts to expire and the release of the next gen iphone right around the corner, it's not much of a surprise. Still I don't see them pulling the same numbers as AT&T on the release of the next iphone either.
 
kwerle said:
It's funny - glanced at our local Verizon store last night - expected big iPhone signs/posters in the windows. Not a thing. They were advertising some windows and some android phone.

I'm not sure what kind of strategy that is...
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Only half the Verizon stores have the iPhone, and non of the authorized dealers (the faux verizon stores that really aren't verizon stores.) That could be why. Do you know if the store had it for sale?

The Verizon store by me has signage for it everywhere.
 
I still got 4 months on my AT&T contract and I'm waiting for the next iPhone to soon come out.

That's why my few million friends and I didn't run out to the Verizon store yet. :D
 
One of my friends went to buy an iPhone 4 from Verizon and the lady made it very clear that in order to use the phone, you had to have a Mac computer. :eek: I couldn't believe how clueless she was... I sure hope she's the anomaly of the Verizon salesperson, or it could be why sales were low. :p
 
Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.80 (Android; Linux; Opera Mobi/ADR-1011151731; U; en) Presto/2.5.28 Version/10.1)

As online sales were so strong, shouldn't Verizon have warned apple of low expected line instead of embarassing them by letting them set up line barriers for the people that weren't ever going to turn up?

It sounds so easy what they've said in this release but they could have warned Apple at least as they obviously expected long lines looking at the videos and staff levels in stores.
 
There has been quite a bit of speculation that Apple will not be supporting the LTE networks until 2012. That means that the iPhone 4 won't see 4G speeds. However, this makes little sense.

If the iPhone 5 is to do well it will have do what Android is doing and more. 4G has become a selling point. You can read more about how the possible 4G out come for the iPhone 5 here: goo.gl/xIRdy
 
funkyT80 said:
I actually wish more companies would take this approach. Waiting in line to hand a company hundreds of dollars is getting ridiculous. Unless they're handing out $100 bills at the end of the line, I won't be in it.
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I couldn't agree more with you.
 
I wonder why. Who would want to stand in the cold for hours? If I remember correctly, it snowed the night before the launch here in VA. At least the people had chick-fil-a to eat!
 
I stopped by Best Buy today to play with the Xoom tablet. The salesperson said that people were looking at it, but many were waiting to see what the iPad 2 was like.

On the way out, I asked the smartphone sales team what was hot. They replied that "everyone" was asking when the big screened LTE Thunderbolt was arriving.

So the Verizon iPhone could be in the same situation as the Xoom. People are hanging back to see what the closest competition will be like.
 
I for one appreciated not having to wait in a massive line on Feb 10. It was 17 degrees here (thats cold for here) and I didn't want to spend hours in line. As it was, the Verizon store employees met me at my car and gave me a number and the paperwork to start filling out while I waited in my warm car.

ATT would have never allowed their existing customers to pre-order like that. They would have favored new customers if they could have gotten away with it.
 
kdarling said:
I stopped by Best Buy today to play with the Xoom tablet. The salesperson said that people were looking at it, but many were waiting to see what the iPad 2 was like.

On the way out, I asked the smartphone sales team what was hot. They replied that "everyone" was asking when the big screened LTE Thunderbolt was arriving.

So the Verizon iPhone could be in the same situation as the Xoom. People are hanging back to see what the closest competition will be like.
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HTC has a winner with that 4.3 inch screen. just traded my 3GS for an Inspire on AT&T. the quality may not be as good as an iphone 4 retina display and android sucks compared to iOS but when i look at the screen it stops me from returning it. and it was only $80. a cheap iphone is $300 once you figure tax, activation and case

and i still have 2 old iphones for music and apps
 
telecoms are soo stupid! they should NOT have had online pre-ordering at all! those big lines generate buzz!
 
Here is the deal.

1. People are locked in to contracts and don't want to pay the etf

or

2. People are waiting for iPhone 5.

I'm not suprised by any of this.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by funkyT80
I actually wish more companies would take this approach. Waiting in line to hand a company hundreds of dollars is getting ridiculous. Unless they're handing out $100 bills at the end of the line, I won't be in it.
ssbearsfan said:
I couldn't agree more with you.
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With such attitude, you should stick with your lovely droids, iPhones would be too demanding.
 
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