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Apple's 5 Million iPhone 5 Sales in First Weekend: 'Disappointing'

This article is more than 10 years old.

This is the world that Apple is living in now – the tech giant sold 5 million iPhone 5 units in a single weekend. For some Wall Street Analysts, this is considered a disappointment. Stock slips.

The iPhone 5 came out at the top of a hype mountain that became ridiculous even by Apple standards – even though it was fairly evident that nothing revolutionary was going to happen, and fairly clear that we had already seen the final design of the product months before the launch, the iPhone 5 was still generating some over-the-top estimates – one analyst guessed that it might sell 6 to 10 million units in the first weekend. JP Morgan was hoping that the little phone could right the entire US economy. That chatter helped to drive Apple stock to over $700 a share.

Ridiculously high sales still short of ridiculously high estimates aren’t Apple’s only headache this week – demand has put pressure on the company’s supply chain and the company is scrambling to fill orders after selling out its initial supply. And the market is having a hard time in general. But this is the tangible evidence of what the hype firestorm before an Apple release can do – it affects not only bloggists and consumers, but investors and analysts as well.

The big question going forward is – can Apple do this again? Will it eventually deplete the reserves of hype it banked during the time when it was releasing revolutionary new products every year? Or can this company genuinely whip us all into a frenzy every time it does anything? The next iPhones and iPads will test the limits of Apple fever – but then again, we all said that last time.