Hot off of Apple’s Q4 earnings call comes a bit of iPhone news: Alongside 2.6 million Macs and 11 million iPods, Apple managed to sell 6,892,000 iPhones in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2008. In contrast, they sold just 1,119,000 iPhones in fiscal Q4 of 2007.
Feeling a bit spunky, Jobs’ mentioned that they’ve outsold some significant competition, saying “We’ve sold more phones than RIM.” While they’ve yet to figure out “how this economic downturn will affect Apple,” they’ve got “$25 billion of cash safely in the bank with zero debt” saved up for a rainy day.
With growth up across the board, how much of Apple’s business is made up by the iPhone? A fairly crazy 39%. This makes Apple the 3rd largest mobile phone supplier in the world, behind only Nokia and Samsung (and followed by Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, and RIM, in that order.)
Growth has been monumental on the hardware front, and things are looking just as good on the software end of things. In August, Apple had pushed over 60 million application downloads since the launch of the App Store. By September’s MacBook event, that number had reached 100 million. By Apples estimates, the store will click past the 200 million download mark tomorrow.
Join us!
No, join us!
And that doesn’t even count the two I sold on eBay because the reception was terrible, and Safari crashed all the time!
Sorry, I had to say it. The iPhone is great, in theory. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work as advertised. I hoped the 2.1 firmware would fix the problems, but it didn’t. I just couldn’t wait around any longer for Apple to deliver basic functionality.
I hope you got a good price, Mike, because most networks will give you your money back if you take it back within 14 days If there’s no network signal where you live. Mine works great, and Safari never crashes.
It’s not the network. I’ve been an AT&T customer for a while, and the signal in my house isn’t great, but my old Nokia works fine here. The iPhone just said, “No Service”. Motorola, Samsung, and HTC phones also work in my house. The only phone that gets no service is the iPhone.
There’s also no reason for the phone to perform as poorly as it does. Safari crashes constantly, usually on complicated sites, but often for no reason at all. There is severe lag when switching applications, particularly SMS and Contacts. One 3rd party app that I relied on quite a bit, Mocha VNC, would often cause the whole phone to freeze, requiring a reboot. That’s not something that should ever happen on a modern OS, especially when developers are playing in such a tiny sandbox.
Like I said, the concept of the iPhone is solid. I love having a computer in my pocket. Apple’s execution is just not sufficiently reliable. I’ll give it another few year to mature, and maybe then it will be stable enough. Maybe Android will be up to speed then, and I’ll go that way. Until then, I’m back to my old phone and my new netbook.
Same here, dropped A LOT of calls, and delayed sending and receiving text messages. Horrible. Same things happen to 3 of my friends who also own it. Seriously gonna switch.
q4 or q3?
Q4 of the Fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2008 – September 30, 2008. We’re now in Q1 of Fiscal year 09.
In combination with Android and Apple announcements, this is a great week for mobile developers… here’s to hoping for a strong Holiday so little johnny doesn’t get a bag of coal. :)
Can’t wait to get mine.
This is great news for the industry. The iPhone is a fantastic platform for developing mobile apps, and the numbers prove that both users and developers love it! I can only say that players like Nokia have been asleep for years, they had the opportunity but never managed to create a platform ever created the kinds of numbers we see from Apple in such a short time. Not that Nokia dont do good phones but this is becoming a software game which the Fins are not very good at.
still expensive though !
Greg, you should go back and check your market share numbers. 6.9mm phones does not bring Apple anywhere close to the #3 global seller of mobile phones. You might be trying to talk about the “smart phone” market, but in the mobile phone market globally, 6.9mm is a small number.
As this is a quarter earnings report, the third largest in the world statement is based off quarter earnings, not units pushed.
Quarter earnings breakdown by company:
1) Nokia ($12.7 billion)
2) Samsung ($5.9 billion).
3) Apple ($4.6 billion)
4) Sony Ericsson ($4.2 billion)
5) LG ($3.4 billion)
6) Motorola ($3.2 billion)
7) RIM ($2.1 billion).
I think the way Jobs presented Apple results about being the third largest handset maker in the world is just a “marketing thing”. We want to hear about volume when ranking handset providers. Selling 13 million handsets doesn’t make you number 3, when companies such as Motorola (the current number 3) sold 160 million handset last year. Added to that, I just don’t think iPhone sales are sustainable. Ok they sold 7 million handsets this quarter as they introduced the 3G in July. 3Q was Apple quarter – but that’s it until next version.
Quarter earnings is a poor metric for market penetration. Apple makes a high-margin product, the fact that they have such high earnings after shifting less than 7m units shows more than any thing else how much Apple users are taken for a ride.
$25 billion in rainy day funds with no debt? That’s a smart company…
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Note Software
The iPhone looks like a tank, but who’s gonna make the Star Trek nipple-phone? I’ve been waiting decades for it.