For years, Verizon customers were clamoring for the iPhone, but now that the phone is here, evidence is mounting that it’s more of a dud than a hit.
First, there were those short, almost nonexistent lines on launch day. Then Boy Genius Report got its hands on some “sensitive information” from a source that indicated sales numbers for the new iPhone were lower than expected (according to those numbers, the Verizon iPhone 4 was barely outpacing its AT&T counterpart four days after launch). Next, Marco Arment, the app developer behind Instapaper reported that he didn’t get the sales spike he expected with the introduction of a new iPhone (this led him to speculate that the Verizon iPhone was being sold to existing iPhone or iPod Touch owners). And just today, the blog ConceivablyTech, claims that UPS was upset after it set up a special shipping program for the Verizon iPhone that turned out to be overkill, with Verizon never matching its “forecasted shipping numbers.”
OK, so the Verizon iPhone isn’t a bomb in the Microsoft Kin sense of the word. But the whispers are out there, getting a little louder each day: the thing just hasn’t met expectations, no dropped calls and all.
The question is why?
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