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Where’s that Verizon iPhone bump?

Where’s that Verizon iPhone bump?

If Apple sold 1 million Verizon iPhones in February, it doesn’t show in ComScore’s data

If you look very closely at the Feb. 2011 data in the chart at right you will see slight uptick in the green line that represents Apple’s (AAPL) share of the U.S. smartphone market.

It’s a subtle change. You might have to enlarge the chart (by clicking) to see it. It reflects, according to the ComScore data released Friday, an increase in the iPhone’s market share from 24.7% in January to 25.2% in February — a month, according to ComScore, in which the Verizon iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in America.

I point this out because one of the great unsolved mysteries of the smartphone wars is the effect of the arrival in February of the long-awaited iPhone for Verizon (VZ). Judging by ComScore’s data, it didn’t do much to slow the advance of Google’s (GOOG) Android, whose U.S. market share rose that month from 31.2% to 33%.

And I would argue that it puts the lie to claims in the press that Verizon sold 1 million iPhones in the first two weeks of February.

Proving this is a little tricky, because Apple doesn’t break down iPhone sales by country. Moreover, what ComScore is reporting is market shares, not actual unit sold, in a market that itself is growing, according to Gartner, at a rate of more than 70% per year.

But here we go:

Using Gartner’s numbers, 296 million smartphones were shipped to U.S. users in 2010 (up from 172 million in 2009). And according ComScore, Apple had 25% of that market — give or take a fraction — for the entire year. That suggests that Apple was selling iPhones in the U.S. last year at a rate of at least 6 million per month, and probably more toward the end of the year.

Let’s assume, conservatively, that total smartphone sales in the U.S. was 25 million in January and February of this year. If it were true that the Verizon iPhone bumped Apple’s sales from 6 million units to more than 7 million in February, Apple’s share of the market would have jumped at least 4 percentage points, not the measly 0.5% ComScore observed.

This math here is pretty shaky, I’ll admit. But it jibes with some first-hand observations.

I’ve seen the kind of crowds that gather outside Apple Stores on those weekends that the company sells 1 million units of anything. Even if, as Verizon reports, 60% of its initial sales were pre-ordered online, you would think if 400,000 people showed up to buy iPhones between Feb. 10 and Feb. 13, someone would have spotted them.

Besides, Verizon has been cagey — and Apple silent — about the size of the Verizon iPhone bump. If 1 million iPhones had been purchased first weekend, don’t you think — given Steve Jobs’ penchant for nice round numbers — that Apple would have issued a press release?

We may finally get some answers on April 20, when Apple reports its earnings for the second quarter of 2011. Tune in here for our analysis.

[Thanks: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com]

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