In the month of July the Apple iPhone accounted for 1.8% of all handsets sold in the U.S., making it the leader in smartphone sales for the month. In it’s first full month the new mobile multimedia handset from Apple managed to outsell popular, long-standing competitors such as Blackberry and Palm devices. Whether or not the iPhone will continue to hold a true market share will remain to be seen, however. Much of the initial sales could easily be attributed to the hype that Apple is so good at building prior to the phone’s launch.
According to the market research firm iSuppli, the “real proof” of Apple’s ability to hold onto the market share it saw in July will come in the next few months leading up to the holidays. But, the number of sales that Apple was able to generate out of the gate for such a relatively expensive device is impressive, nonetheless. ISuppli is predicting that Apple will ship 4.5 million iPhones in 2007, and as many as 30 million by 2011.