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IPhone.com has been acquired by Apple
July 1st, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
I can confirm Apple has bought IPhone.com from Michael Kovatch. Michael would not disclose the sale prices but he said it was well worth it to sell. I know this was at least a million dollar sale. Michael said this last week was a very busy one inside of Apple. He was holding out because he truly wanted to use the domain. Michael had his business partner (and lawyer) handled the negotiation. He considered not selling at the very end, he had registered the domain back in 1995 and was building a company on the domain. The Traffic on the domain had begun to skyrocket in the last 6 months and it showed good signs of potential. Michael settled for a huge check instead of trying to realizing the potential of the domain. It turned out that domain was so valuable that Apple just had to own it. I pointed a few days ago that 4,000 IPhone domains have been bought this year and that another 4,000 will be bought before the year is done. It is extremely critical that Apple own the domain. The headaches would have just compounded had they not owned the domain. I advise clients to own the domain BEFORE they announce a new brand. Apple spend far more money buying the domain 6 months after the announcement. Michael had to turn on Proxy Whois because he was receiving so many phone calls. After the proxy whois was turned on it helped shield 99.9% of the phone calls.
Upon closing the deal, Michael changed the name servers over to Apple.com
and now Apple controls the DNS. The domain is still in Michael’s account under Domains by Proxy but Apple plans to transfer the domain in the next week. We used our Historic Whois records to go back in time and get Michael’s home phone number. 
I asked him what other domains he owned and he said he had some good ones. Soccer Shop.com, Wine.net, Golf.net, Noc.net, Wine Online.com, Kovo.com, Tee Shirt.com, and Cyber Wine.com. Michael started an ISP in 1993 and was in the right place at the right time. He knew the Internet would allow telephone calls one day and that is why he registered IPhone.com. Little did he know the 12 years later the Internet would be one his cell phones and Apple would reveal a product with his name and all this would make him an instant Millionaire.
His seven digit sale goes down in History as one of the biggest sales for a domain name.
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Posted in Domain Sales |
119 Comments »
July 1st, 2007 at 9:00 am
Congratulations to Michael for his Karnack the Magnificent domain pick.
Jay, I am sure your iPhone domains post only fueled Apple’s sense of urgency to acquire their latest brand domain.com
July 1st, 2007 at 10:42 am
Why can’t anyone create a new phone/computer/MP3-player or whatever and call it XMGS.com
? Something like this will never happen to me 
, I guess.
Anyway I’m happy for Michael and I hope he will find a new domain for his company.
/Andreas
July 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am
Michael could use some of his sales proceeds to buy his name.com
for posterity’s sake.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Good post
July 2nd, 2007 at 6:59 am
For such a smart company like Apple, I am amused that they made such a big boo boo by not trying to get the domain before they made the accouncement.
Al
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Hi there, I own iphone.info
and I could be interested in making a good sale… any suggestion? Thanks! 
UPDATE BY JAY: You should put up a forum and build some value. I am sure you will have some type-ins, but you have the perfect SEO name to reach people. I am sure some people will contact you after reading this as well.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
Steve Jobs said the following to Vincent Nguyen when they met at WSJ: D5, All Things Digital, “I recommend you changing the name, we have a team of lawyers to go after that kind of stuff.”
http://www.myitablet.com/legal-handshake-with-steve-jobs-apple-lawyers-will-go-after-my-iphone-name-31729.php
http://www.myitablet.com/a-friendly-word-of-advice-to-fellow-iphone-enthusiasts-19861.php
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 am
Will this make misspellings of iphone.com
popular too? (ex. ihpone.com
)
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Haha I own allaboutiphone.com
wonder how much that is worth?
iregisterdomains@gmail.com
July 4th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Way to go Micheal! Seems odd Apple did not buy that upfront before the launch of their product. But, one thought is maybe they were waiting for the trademark issue with Cisco to pan out, Cisco owns the trademark “iphone”.
I wonder with all these new iphone domains popping up, will this cause iphone related domains to be devalued? I imagine many of the domains will be parked with no valuable content on them. Then you have sites like:
http://tickets-to-events.com/iphone/
advertising on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_en__175&q=site%3Ablog.domaintools.com+iphone
just in hopes to make some money off of ebay. The site alone looks terrible and I wouldn’t even stick around to browse it. Parked pages are more attractive than that.
I am developing iPhoneGear.com
to be a store for accessories and a community site, somewhat an experiment. There will be plenty of stores selling iphone stuff but with a community too? Let’s see how this experiment goes.
Again, congrats Micheal for your tenacity to hang on to your domains for so long. I hope more of them end up paying you big bucks.
July 4th, 2007 at 5:20 am
iPhones are destined to be a smash success worldwide. For those of you that don’t have one, here’s a simple way to keep abreast of the latest buzz on iPhones.
On ANY wap enabled cell phone browser, simply enter the numeric-equivalent of the word ‘iPhone’, which is 474663. Add .com and press ‘send’, ‘call’, ‘go’ etc.
Enter 474663.com
Cheers
July 8th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
perhaps it is me, but if you register a domain with the term iphone in it, you will most likely be violating a trademark. The guy who sold iphone most likely registered it prior to the trademark iphone being created…..registering iphone domains now is a waste of time.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I ran into Micheal a few days ago and conducted a brief video interview with his explanation of how he acquired the domain. You can check it out here: http://www.thinkingserious.com/2008/05/07/the-story-behind-iphonecom/
July 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
Apple übernimmt für 1 Millionen Dollar iPhone.com
…
Verrückt aber war: Apple kauft die Domain iPhone.com
für 1 Millionen Dollar! Eine wie ich finde beachtliche Summe für eine Domain die Apple meiner Meinung nach nicht sehr viel hilft. Der Grund zu dieser Annahme ist das potenzielle Kunden die bei Goo…
April 11th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Thanks a lot! I hope this will help. I’ll try it out.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Thanks a lot! I hope this will help. I’ll try it out.
You can check it out here: http://mp3-player-speakers.com