iPhone Activation at All-Time High

When the iPhone was first introduced on January 2007, opinion was split.  Would it fly or flop?

Well, three-and-a-half years later, it seems safe to say that the Apple fans were right.  AT&T, for better or worse the only service provider that supports the iPhone, announced that second quarter iPhone activations totaled 3.2 million, the highest of any quarter.  Let’s put that into perspective: 3.2 million is only 200,000 less than the population of Connecticut and more than the population of 21 states in the United States.

That is a number which, like Facebook’s user total, put paid to quite a bit of cynicism.

The launch of the fourth generation of iPhone (which in itself is amazing to consider – an update per year, with lots of more minor updates in between) may explain the reason for the boom in new activations.  The iPhone’s trustworthiness (and AT&T’s network inadequacies) are now known quantities, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of existing apps, iTunes movies, songs, and ringtones.  And new features add icing to the cake – a higher quality 5MP camera, connectivity having similar bandwidth to a regular WiFi service.

Will Apple continue to define the category?  Does it matter? By the look of things, the sales of iPhone will continue to strengthen – and Apple’s strategy of device integration can easily extend into other areas, meaning new iPhone versions.  And once Apple launches the iPhone through Verizon next January, it it may be fair to claim that the iPhone will unequivocally smart phone market.

But does it matter if it doesn’t?  Probably not.  Android devices have kicked up a numbers fuss recently, but that debate entirely misses the point.  A productive shift in computing for many average people from ineffective, desktop-tethered machines to nimble, highly effective mobile devices is now mainstream – and that means good things regardless of platform.  Who knows, maybe Palm and Blackberry will even have something to say about market share in the coming years.