Otherwise each retail store would have sold 20000 phones by the reverse of your math.
So 4000 is probably not a very accurate estimate either...
You are guestimating that 4000 gold phones were sold in the stores based on a 10 per store rumored number you've heard and 400 stores. Then you guess that retail is only 10% (another guess) and so multiply you original guestimate by 10 to get 40000 gold phones.
It's quite hopeless guesswork. We don't know the distribution of models in retail or online. We don't know how much is sold online compared to retail. We don't know how much was sold outside Apple's retail stores (by e.g. AT&T). We don't even know the geographical distribution (i.e. higher gold-ratio in China than US).
If we assume a factor 3 to 1 sales of iPhone 5S vs 5C based on Localitics'report (1), Apple has sold between 6-7 million iPhone 5S. Your 40.000 number isn't even 1% of that, so I think you are an order of magnitude off still.
[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/23/iphone-5s-3-times-...
Of course mine is a complete guess. I make no claims otherwise. But so is yours. So kindly cut the attitude.
Just pointing out that it is impossible to guess, and that your last number constitutes less than 1% of the total estimated iPhone 5Ss sold.
It's easy to guess! Nearly impossible to guess accurately, though, I agree.
You're right about it being less than 1% of the total, although I disagree that this makes the estimate absurd. I think it's entirely possible that the gold 5S constitutes less than 1% of production or sales so far. I certainly could be wrong.
Looks like the typical price is around there, though. I do see some sold for well over $2,000, though. I wonder if that means the $1,000 listings are underpriced, or if those high-end listings just got lucky and found a few suckers.
It will be interesting if we ever get a color breakdown to see if this "gold is for Asian countries" thing actually holds up, or if it's just another instance of bizarre cultural misunderstanding.
Still may be a bizarre cultural misunderstanding, as sounds like it's crazy popular everywhere else too.
Expect every smartphone maker make & push gold phones hard after today.
ETA: Note "seems". That's my impression from the link, no hard data seen yet.
Totally anecdotally, I reserved a black (sorry, "space gray") phone at Target on Wednesday as a backup plan, in case I failed at the Apple store. They still haven't told me it's ready.
From what I've heard (hooray for rumors!) non-Apple stores are getting just a handful of phones, while Apple's stores are going through hundreds or thousands.