∞ Apple on track to sell more iPhones in 2011 than all other years combined

Written by

Matt Richman:

Of the 25.09 million iPhones Apple sold in 2009, 35.8% of them came during Apple’s first and second calendar quarters. In 2010 that number was 36.1%. Using calendar 2011 iPhone sales numbers and a 36% average, Apple is on track to sell a whopping 108.3 million iPhones this year. To put that in perspective, 108.3 million iPhones would be 20% more than it sold in all of 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined.

This is just getting silly now.


  • http://twitter.com/mathewlu Mathew Lu

    Yeah, but in those years there was a new iPhone in June. I’m sure the new iPhone will be a major hit, but with Apple mobile products the issue is often one of supply as a much as demand (e.g. Apple has only recently caught up with the iPad 2). So even if we get a new phone in Sept, the projection is unlikely to be accurate.

    • Anonymous

      There is a blog post on Horace Dediu’s Asymco (http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/20/how-did-i-get-the-iphone-number-so-wrong/) where he hypothesizes that it is BECAUSE there has been no new iPhone for over a year that that is fueling these outrageous numbers (found the link through Daring Fireball http://www.daringfireball.net), which is counter-intuitive. But touching on something you commented on, it has enabled Apple to get production fully ramped up on the 4 so that they can meet all the demand. Constantly restarting the process every year prevents that.

      I can appreciate that. We like to think of computer geeks but that’s relative. I consider myself in a class of very tech-savvy users, a small percentage of which are really technically knowledgeable (I’m not part of that sub-group). But we ourselves are also the comparatively small percentage of the larger (and ever-growing) population of smartphone users. I can identify with the relief someone might feel that there isn’t no new phone, no decision to make. Just sell me an iPhone.