There are now more iPhones sold than babies born in the world every day

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/25/there-are-now-more-iphones-sold-than-babies-born-in-the-world-every-day/

by coupdegrace • 15 years ago

35 23 15 years ago

powrtoch• 15 years ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this may not be a sustainable trend.

dahjelle• 15 years ago

That was my first thought, too. Then I realized that it just might be: the lifespan of an average baby is significantly longer than the lifespan of an average phone.

Now, if the statistic was Apple was selling more iPhones to new cell phone customers or even to people who'd never had an iPhone, then you'd be exactly correct.

tl• 15 years ago

Why not? Humans (hopefully) have a much longer lifespan than phones. This should stay true even if Apple merely retains their current market share.

ja27• 15 years ago

Partially due to all the couples going to sleep with their phones?

mladenkovacevic• 15 years ago

sexting must be through the roof

nirvana• 15 years ago

Its interesting that this number, 400k per day, is significantly less than the 700k per day that Google has recently claimed to be activating.

Yet at the same time, the iPhone is %55 of Verizon's sales, and the iPhone is not the only iOS device, with the iPod touch doing pretty well (7M last quarter) and the iPad having essentially no competition and growing around %100 a year.

To me, this implies that a very large number of the android phones being activated each day are outside the USA, and I suspect to people who otherwise would have bought a feature phone. It looks like the difference in distribution (android's distribution is much broader since it has more hardware partners who have more longstanding agreements with more carriers) is the key to the difference in activation numbers.

r00fus• 15 years ago

Sales numbers by Apple are hard, cold, verifyable numbers.

"Activations" is still a term that has no clear definition. Google has hinted at what they are (and are not), but even their meaning to Google in terms of the bottom-line are unclear.

Android is no doubt a phenomenon that is sweeping the mobile world... how does Google profit or succeed from this?

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

> Android is no doubt a phenomenon that is sweeping the mobile world... how does Google profit or succeed from this?

I suppose Google's goal with Android is to maintain those numbers up http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_search_engine-ww-monthly-2...

industrialwaste• 15 years ago

From my understanding Apples sale numbers are sales to stores, not to customers. So they are hard, cold, verifyable numbers of what are sold to storefronts and not necessarily to people who are using the phone.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

orky562• 15 years ago

It's also worth noting the high rates of returns for Android devices versus iOS devices. Activations don't really take this into account whereas net sales probably does.

orjan• 15 years ago

I haven't seen any numbers on Android/iPhone returns. I can understand that counting activations might inflate the numbers but is the return rate so high as to make a real difference?

justincormack• 15 years ago

There seems to be a higher ratio of Android to Apple phones in non English speaking countries. I wonder if it is largely the Apple marketing machine not so geared up. I think the smartphone upgrade is pretty universal in richer countries.

joelrunyon2• 15 years ago

I bet it's the cost factor. I know tons of people in the developing world that don't always have electricity, but they have smart phones.

fpp• 15 years ago

I believe, besides the great success that Apple has with its mobile devices, the most interesting here are the enormous sums the mobile carriers are spending to subsidize this growth - up to US$300 per device.

This is certainly not something they can sustain much longer at these levels and also cross-sponsoring Apple devices by all their other phones (mostly Android) will not stretch this much further.

I guess we've just seen the peak of that where both Apple & the mobile operators had underestimated demand.

The most likely outcome of that will be that the mobile operators might start selling new Apple devices at their true cost - i.e. those will become substantially more expensive for the consumers with a market saturation happening / having already happened at the same time - or in other words - less phones with similar income for Apple but consumers not buying a new Apple phone every year.

schraeds• 15 years ago

The average contract revenue for an iPhone user is around $2,000 ($100x24 months, give or take).

The average subsidy for iPhones is more like $450 per phone (thus the Apple unlocked price of $600+ for unsubsidized phones).

15% of contract value to subsidize the hardware doesn't seem that bad. I wonder how much cable companies pay for set-top boxes, Vonage with free VOIP adapters, etc.

microtherion• 15 years ago

So would that make Android the Orkut of smartphone operating systems?

joelrunyon2• 15 years ago

Activations would still be disimilar to sales because Apple profits both from the sale of the hardware, but if I remember correctly, they also are cut part of the recurring contract revenue (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm not sure how Google ends up making their money off Android (other than it allowing them a much-need and very good-sized footprint in the mobile market). While they might get some cut of the phone contract, they don't get the profit from the hardware side, which like most Apple devices is very profitable.

laconian• 15 years ago

There are more atoms in the universe than there are iPhones.

fragsworth• 15 years ago

Analogous to "Peak Oil", would this suggest Apple is approaching "Peak iPhone"?

blago• 15 years ago

Let's put it this way: if every person was to buy a single phone their entire life, and they were only allowed to buy an iPhone, it would take Apple close to 70 years (at this rate) to achieve full penetration!

People are so easy to impress.

fhmalik• 14 years ago

seems like an unsustainable business model to me.

There are now more iPhones sold than babies born in the world every day

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