Mr. Munster, in fact, dispatched spies to monitor Apple stores in New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis, who found that some 40 percent of the phones were sold to people who purchased more than one phone at a time.
“The majority of the people who were buying more than one phone were Asian, and they were bringing small buses of people who all buy more than one phone,” he said. Mr. Munster conjectured that many of the phones are being resold into Asia. It is hard to get an iPhone there and, he said, “With the value of the dollar, the cost of the phone is much less here.”
Mr. Munster estimates that of the 1.7 million phones not activated by AT&T 350,000 were sold through Apple’s partners in Europe, 512,000 were in inventory at AT&T and the European carriers, and 838,000 were sold and unlocked. Mr. Sacconaghi figures slightly fewer phones were sold in Europe and are in inventory, leaving 1 million unlocked phones.
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