Welcome to iDay, the biggest consumer electronics launch in history

[6:40 am line for Apple Macworld Keynote where the iPhone was announced, January 6 2007;
I don't have any iPhone store line photos yet]

The iDay has arrived. Today, Apple's iPhone goes on sale this evening in the United States at roughly 168 Apple Stores and almost 1,800 AT&T stores. Blackfriars estimates that Apple has approximately a million iPhones manufactured, and that it will likely sell 500,000 of them this first weekend. If Apple should achieve that goal, it will be the largest consumer electronics launch ever in terms of dollar amounts for the first weekend of sales, amassing $275 million in sales just one weekend.

For comparison, I've listed a few other important historical consumer electronics launches:

• Sony Betamax VCR: $58 million over seven months The original Sony BetaMax sold 15,000 units (according to Wikipedia), each selling for an average of about 230,000 yen in 1975. At the time, there were about 300 yen per dollar, so it was a roughly $900 device, meaning Sony made about $15 million in revenue that first year. Accounting for the fact that a 1975 dollar is worth $3.87 today, that makes the BetaMax launch worth about $58 million year one. Even if Apple should sell only 100,000 iPhones in the first weekend (I'm predicting 5 times that), its launch will equal the entire first year of BetaMax sales.


• Microsoft Windows 95: $122 million in the first four days Microsoft Windows 95, while not a consumer electronics product and also bolstered by OEM computer maker sales, sold a million copies of that software package at $90 a copy over four days in 1995. That's $90 million over those four days, and a 1995 dollar is worth $1.35 today. That means first four days of the Windows 95 launch was worth $121.5 million.


• Microsoft XBox 360: $128 million in the first weekend The XBox 360 sold roughly 345,000 units over its first weekend on sale in the US in 2005, at an average selling price of $370. The first weekend of sales generated $128 million in revenue.

I'm going to take pictures at the Burlington AT&T and Apple Stores this afternoon. Meanwhile, for anyone needing proof that today is going to be a circus, they have only to look at the pictures from AppleInsider of the line outside the San Francisco Apple store.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple Store, at&t, Consumer Electronics, Launches, Marketing, Microsoft, Betamax, Sony, Windows 95, XBox 360