Analysts had estimated that AT&T and Apple would sell and activate 500,000 iPhones before AT&T's earnings report was released yesterday.

AT&T says they only activated 146,000—and Apple is expected to release their sales numbers today. Could they be as high as 300,000? Did half of their customers buy a phone that they didn't activate? Seems unlikely.

Too bad for Apple... Their shares are down 6%.

From the Chicago Tribune:

CIBC World Markets said that demand for the iPhone has had a "significant decline" in the past 10 days and that Apple and AT&T might try to boost demand by increasing their marketing efforts. Apple introduced the iPhone in the U.S. on June 29.

"We have noticed decent inventories at stores and thin demand at best," CIBC analyst Ittai Kidron wrote in a note. "Among the stores we visited, most visitors were not looking at the device, and only a very small subset bought it."

We're less than shocked that a phone that costs $2,000 (all told) didn't sell 500,000 units. Those numbers were just silly. It's simply too expensive. 146,000 seems like a great success from where we're standing. As an analyst told USA Today: "We became victims of our own hype."

Shares fall on soft demand for iPhone [Chicago Tribune]
(Photo:hanapbuhay)