RBC: Verizon to sell over 1 million iPhones in first week, 3-4 million in Q1

In a note to investors on Tuesday, RBC Capital Markets General Manager Mike Abramsky issued the firm’s estimates for sales of Verizon Wireless’ iPhone 4 during its first week and first quarter of availability. Best on the firm’s pre-order estimates, RBC believes that first-week sales of Verizon’s iPhone 4, which goes on sale tomorrow, will surpass 1 million units. Channel inventory at launch is estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 million units, and Abramsky thinks the entire inventory may be depleted during the phone’s first week of availability. RBC also projects that between 3 and 4 million Verizon iPhone 4 units will be sold during the first quarter of 2011. Finally, RBC notes that its previous estimates of between 9 and 10 million Verizon iPhones being sold during the 2011 calendar year may be conservative. Verizon Wireless took pre-orders from existing subscribers on February 3rd and stated that the highly anticipated smartphone broke its previous first-day sales record in less than two hours. Pre-sales were available for a total of 17 hours and analyst estimates for total pre-sales on February 3rd are as high as 500,000 units.