iPhone 3G S expectations: 500,000 units sold over the weekend

With Apple’s iPhone 3G S hitting stores today analysts are starting to guess how many units will be sold over the weekend. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is guessing Apple will sell 500,000 iPhone 3G S units over the weekend, that’s half of what the iPhone 3G did over three days last year.

In a research note ,

Apple will begin selling the new iPhone 3G S in 8 countries. We expect Apple to sell 500k iPhone 3G S units over the weekend. This would compare to 1m iPhone 3G units in the launch weekend last year, and 270k units in the original iPhone launch weekend. Several factors lead us to believe Apple will sell less iPhone 3G S’s at launch than it did for the iPhone 3G including a less dramatic change in value proposition and fewer available countries at launch.