Walter Johnson walked into the Apple store at Cherry Creek Shopping Center on Monday and returned his iPhone.
He hadn’t used the new, sleek, 8-giga byte device since making the $600 purchase Friday evening. And after 30 minutes of phone calls between his company’s IT department and troubleshooting from an Apple store employee Monday, he decided that getting his e-mail, contact and calendar information was too cumbersome on the iPhone, compared with his current smartphone.
“My BlackBerry is more convenient,” said Johnson, a mortgage broker based in Scottsdale, Ariz., who recently bought a second home in Denver. “I didn’t care about the music. (The iPhone) was more about the e-mail and having a second phone.”
It’s been four days since the iPhone went on sale. While some users have reported problems activating the phones on their AT&T wireless accounts, others, like Mike Miller, are simply in love with the device.
“It’s the ease of use. It’s very intuitive,” said the Denver real estate broker. “I’m trying to encourage my friends to get it.”
Miller purchased his phone Friday from an AT&T wireless store on the 16th Street Mall. He said he had no problems setting up the phone, which took about 15 minutes, and is able to access his work e-mail through the phone.
AT&T spokeswoman Vanessa Smith said problems involving activating iPhones online through Apple’s iPod application, iTunes, have been resolved.
“It was the overwhelming majority of customers activating phones on the iTunes site,” she said.
There is no official count of how many iPhones have been sold since Friday evening, and there was no shortage of phones at the Cherry Creek mall Apple store Monday afternoon, with people coming in to touch the most hyped cellphone in recent memory. Many customers left with one or two new phones.
“I just think it looks nice, and I hope I get better reception than I do on my current phone,” said Jake Olson as he walked out of the Apple store with an iPhone. “It was an impulse buy.”
According to estimates by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, about 500,000 iPhones were sold over the weekend, more than twice his projection of 200,000. J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. analyst Bill Shope estimated sales were 312,000.
And despite having to return his phone, Johnson, a big fan of Apple products, said he wasn’t disappointed that he wouldn’t be among the first to own the iPhone, which he called the “best personal cellphone on the market.”
“I own just about everything in this store,” he said pointing to the MacBooks, a row of iPods and accessories. “The iPhone has to change to fit the consumer.”
He hopes the next version will be suited for business users. “If not, we’ll just keep our $600.”
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
