iPhone 5 Sales Viewed as Disappointing, Short Supplies and Pre-Orders Blamed

Opening weekend sales for the iPhone 5 came in well below analyst expectations.

Today, Apple announced that it sold five million iPhone 5s in the three days following its launch. This is far below analyst expectations of 6-10 million.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster previously said that 6 million would be worse case scenario considering the device is a major update. The iPhone 4S sold 4 million in its opening weekend.

Here's how Munster explains the low sales figure:

We believe there are two factors that negatively impacted the number. First, our sales expectation assumed that Apple would include all phones pre-ordered online. We believe that this may have been up to 1 million additional units as units pre-ordered after the middle of the first day were projected to be available in October. Second, we noted 1.25 days of Apple Retail inventory compared to 2.5 days during the 4S launch. Our 8 million estimate assumed full weekend availability and the counting of all online pre-orders. We believe that if supply were not a constraint and Apple included all pre-orders, the launch weekend number would have been closer to 7-8 million, assuming ~1 million October pre-order sales and an additional 1-2 million units at retail.

Topeka Capital analyst Brian White said, "We believe this shortfall is largely due to supply availability and the fact that most consumers are opting for the pre-order option."

ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall said, "The 5mil+ iPhone 5 reported sales only takes into consideration: 1) what was sold into partners (e.g., retail outlets, carriers, etc.), 2) sold in AAPL retail stores, and 3) direct to customers only if they signed for the device. Importantly, this doesn't take into consideration units in delivery direct to customers (i.e., AAPL must have signature of acceptance by customer before it is counted as a sale) and we estimate units in transit could be in the millions currently."

BusinessInsider has created some charts to help visualize the number in comparison to the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S launch.

Take a look below...

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