iPhone News Updated

Apple iPhone dominating with share of criticism…and sales

Apple iPhone dominating with share of criticism…and sales

Here’s a paradox to ponder: Could the iPhone 3G be setting records both for sales, usage and consumer complaints?

Bill Snyder at InfoWorld doesn’t mince any words and simply declares it to be a “flawed launch of the iPhone 3G.”

“Users in many parts of the country found that the cool handheld wasn’t running mobile applications much faster than the original despite Apple’s claims of ‘twice as fast,’” Snyder wrote.

He acknowledges that some of the problems could originate inside the iPhone’s electronic guts, but he also zings AT&T, the wireless company with exclusive rights to the iPhone in the United States.

The situation in the Washington, D.C., metro area is telling, he said. “AT&T promised to have some 800 towers ready at launch. It delivered 80, Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg (who lives there) told me during a break at Demo. How is a software fix going to fix that?”

Dan Lyons at Newsweek reviewed the underwhelming Apple announcements this week, noting that Steve Jobs slipped a new iPhone fix promise in with the new rainbow array of iPod nanos.

“And by the end of this week, Apple hopes to have yet another software update for the new 3G iPhone (the third update so far), and this time they say they really, really mean business and will address those nasty little problems people are having with the 3G iPhone–teeny-tiny things like dropped calls, bad reception, slow Web browsing and inability to attach to 3G networks,” Lyons wrote.

So with a barrage of class-action lawsuits and withering criticism being flung at the electronic wizards in Cupertino, and their partners at AT&T, you might think consumers would be steering clear of the iPhone 3G.

Not so much.

Charles Jade at ars technica noted Apple’s officially released iPhone sales number of 1 million in three days, estimates of at least five times that many sales since then and musings of many more in the days to come.

“While the only official data has been the three-day total of 1 million sold provided by Apple, the unofficial number is 5,649,000 from July 11th through August 31st,” Jade wrote. “That’s a lot of iPhone love, and surely it means 10 million is a done deal very soon.”

Arvind Arora, a contributing editor at TMCnet notes how quickly iPhones have accounted for a stunning share of wireless activity.

“During the last month, the Apple iPhone was the fastest-growing device in the world, which ended August with more than 2.9 million requests per day, while smartphones accounted for 25.8 percent of worldwide traffic in August, which is up by 3.4 percent since May 2008, says the report,” Arora wrote.

Turns out, however, that Sprint’s Instinct also is continuing to gain traction, according to AdMob Mobile Metrics Report.

“The report further says that BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro, BlackBerry Curve, Apple iPhone, and Samsung Instinct were the top five smartphones in the United States during August, all of which together generated 12.9 percent of all US traffic, a 2.4 percent increase over July,” he wrote.

[Thanks: http://sprintconnection.kansascity.com]

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