iPhone, doing better than expected

Fortune reports: [edited]

Now that Apple has shipped its 10 millionth iPhone — outselling Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry for the quarter and climbing to the No. 3 spot in cell phone revenues worldwide — this might be a good time to revisit AAPLinvestors’ iPhone Death Watch, a collection of some of dumbest things people have said about the device over the past two years.

“Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail.”

— Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006

“[Apple's iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.”

— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.”

— John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

“I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.”

— David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.”

— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 30 April 2007

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