sales

iPhone owners eager to trade in their existing devices have kept eBay busy over the past week.

In the five days following last Wednesday's unveiling of the iPhone 5, trade-in offers through eBay's Instant Sale service climbed 265 percent compared with the same period the previous week.

Of the total surge in offers, iOS device owners accounted for 69 out of every 100, Android owners for 16 of every 100, BlackBerry owners 11 out of every 100, and users of other mobile operating systems 4 out of every 100.

Drilling down to the total iPhone offers themselves, 46 … Read more

With the iPhone 5's launch this Friday, it's that time of the year when it comes to guessing just how many iPhones Apple will sell.

The latest estimate comes from Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, who in a note to investors today says that at best Apple will move 8 million to 10 million iPhones, and at worst, 6 million.

"While we continue to believe an 8 million launch weekend figure is achievable, we believe that the 2 million preorders suggest that the worst case weekend sales figure is likely to be 6 million," Munster wrote. … Read more

California's tax collectors are preparing to open a new front in their battle to collect sales taxes from Amazon.com customers.

A deal inked last year between Amazon and Sacramento means that, for most items shipped from the online retailer's warehouses, sales tax will be collected at checkout starting tomorrow. But, as CNET reported earlier this week, that doesn't apply to hundreds of thousands of items "fulfilled" by Amazon from its warehouses on behalf of other sellers.

That means a New York camera shop could have inventory located in an Amazon warehouse outside of San … Read more

The iPhone 5 hiccuped onto the market today, taking down several online stores and quickly selling out the first supply of Apple's new smartphone.

Initial stock from Apple for release day delivery sold out in less than an hour. Those looking to purchase the phone just after 1 a.m. PT discovered new orders from Apple's online site had estimated shipping times of "2 weeks" instead of the original "delivers by" September 21 message.

How far back can Apple push it? In the case of the iPhone 4S last year, Apple extended delivery of … Read more

Thousands of units of the new iPhone 5 and other popular smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy S III will likely fly off California store shelves the last week of September, and many of the consumers purchasing them will probably do a double take at the total on the receipt.

That's what happened to CNET reader Debi Scott, who read my story on how much sales tax from new iPhone sales could add to local government coffers (JP Morgan also took note of the iPhone 5's potential as an economic booster shortly thereafter) and thought I might be understating the case. Scott told me how she purchased two iPhone 4S smartphones last year for $199 each at an AT&T store in Visalia, Calif., and was charged more than $100 in sales tax.… Read more

Two weeks from today, the Apple store in Denver's Cherry Creek shopping center is likely to collect enough sales tax in just a few hours to pay the entire year's salary of one of Denver's city employees.

This assertion assumes, of course, that the iPhone 5 will go on sale across Europe and the United States on September 21 and that it will sell like... well, like an iPhone (the device sells much better than hotcakes these days).

I was curious just how much of a single-day boost all those huge lines at Apple stores on iPhone release day give to local government coffers, so I made some calls yesterday morning.… Read more

As back to school kicks off in the U.S., new data claims that Apple's iPad is outpacing traditional PCs in sales to students and schools for the first time ever.

Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, wrote to investors today that the iPad is now "cannibalizing" PCs in sales to the K-12 market, according to Apple Insider.

"Clearly, a significant portion of iPad sales represented an expansion of the market," Wolf wrote, according to Apple Insider. "But in view of the fact that Mac sales held steady at around 520,000 … Read more

In a filing earlier today, picked up by Bloomberg, Apple said it wants to extend an earlier injunction on Samsung's Wi-Fi-only 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet to encompass the cellular version as well.

Apple cites the jury verdict from last week, which found the Wi-Fi version of that tablet to infringe on three of Apple's "feature" (i.e., software) patents. The 4G version of the tablet was also on the verdict form, but the jury didn't find that it infringed any of Apple's design (i.e., hardware) patents. … Read more