One thing we learned with the iPod is that when a device is game-changing, the demand will come...However, it is difficult to predict the inflection point. For example, in December 2004, Street expectations for iPod ran wild with investors anticipating 8 million iPods, but Apple only sold 4.6 million. It was feared at the time that the iPod would never go mainstream.

Conversations with investors over the past month suggest awareness of potential for iPhone units is high, but awareness of potential resulting impact to earnings is low...if Apple can sell 45 million units in CY09, the earnings power and historical multiple ranges suggest our price target is reasonable.

Bottom line? Slice and dice the stats however you want, it seems pretty safe to check the success column for the iPhone launch—they sold a buttload and pretty much everybody who really wanted one got one—despite some sniggles.

If you didn't purchase salvation yet, fret not, 84 percent of Apple stores still had phones in stock on Sunday (but don't be shocked if only the 4GBers remain). Or you could grit your teeth and try to bear 2-4 week ship time from the online Apple Store.

Piper Jaffray: 500,000 iPhones sold over the weekend [Crave via Boy Genius Report]

On top of no pre-orders, Merrill Lynch (respectable analysts, but analysts nonetheless) is estimating that Apple will only be punching out around 200-300 thousand iPhones a month initially before speeding up to a million by the end of the year, for a total of four million shipped this year.

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If you want to skip the riots, patience might pay off with ML pegging 12 million as the number for '08. Granted, that assumes that Apple would still only pump out a million a month—if demand is too insane, we imagine they can ask God to speed up his monthly deliveries to Earth. – Matt Buchanan

Merrill Lynch: iPhone shipments to total four million this year [Digitimes via New Launches]
Image via Flickr

Much like the Western calendar marks time from before and after Jesus Christ, and how the computer world changed totally by the Macintosh—remembering that Windows is Microsoft's copy of the Mac operating system—I am certain that the mobile telecoms world will count its time in two Eras. The Era BI: time Before the iPhone, and the ERA AI: time After the iPhone.

He views the iPhone model of mobile multimedia, multitasking thingamajigger as a new paradigm, on top of which a new Silicon Valley bubble will be built, since "Microsoft, Dell, HP, Intel, IBM, any IT company will suddenly want a cellphone strategy. Mobile experts will suddenly be in short supply," making this "the new dawn of the computer age. The real revival after the dot-com bust."

For all of his hyperbolic bombast, however, he's more than likely spot on in one respect: mobile advertising will probably become more aggressive post-iPhone and iClones, given the range of content that will ostensibly be viewed on them, and to nod his way, the size of the screen.

What do you guys think? Dawn of a new era or over-hyped blip on the gadget radar? How bonkers (or not) is Tomi? – Matt Buchanan

Entering iPhone Era: Marking Time in Mobile [Communities Dominate Brands via Smart Mobs]

The shaky manifesto wavers a bit into believability, however, when he says that the current geek-heaviness owes to "the average consumer still being confused about different video formats and DRM rights, getting downloaded video onto the TV, and premium content being slow to arrive to the digital market." On that much, he's right.

But is that enough to reason to think paid downloads are doomed to imminent oblivion in the wake of say, Joost? Or a subscription service attached to your 360 or Apple TV? As Ars points out, people occasionally do like to own the content they watch. You know, sometimes. And the market's still in its relative infancy, with potentially lots of room to grow into the proper niches to fit users' tastes.

Have guys paid for a video download? From who? – Matt Buchanan

Forrester: Paid video downloads, Apple TV a "dead end" [Ars Technica]
Image via Flickr