Total iPhone sales are about to exceed 1 billion

Apple is on the verge of selling 1 billion iPhones, a rare achievement for any consumer electronics company and one that underscores the maturity of the smartphone market.

Wall Street analysts say the milestone could come when Apple reports third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, with three-month iPhone sales expected to hit 40 million. That would bring total iPhone sales to 987 million by the end of June.

With analysts expecting iPhone sales of at least 40 million more this quarter, or 13 million a month, the billionth iPhone could be sold as soon as this week — if it hasn’t already been achieved.

“A billion is the new million,” said Benedict Evans, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, alluding to the fact that several internet services, including Facebook and WhatsApp Messenger, can claim 10-digit audiences. Half of all iPhone sales have come in the past two years.

To put that number into context, Evans said, Apple had sold a total of 397m iPods in 2014, when it stopped reporting them, while iPhone sales were close to the 1.1bn produced by the Japanese digital camera industry from 1999 to 2015. Cumulative PC sales since 1981 could top 5bn this year, he added, while Nokia sold 453m phones in its peak year of 2010.

"Microsoft had a vision of a computer on every desk," Evans said. "Now the vision of smartphones is a computer in every pocket. Our vision scale now is every person on the planet."

Apple disclosed earlier this year that it now has 1 billion active devices, including iPads, Macs, Apple TVs and Apple Watches, as it seeks to shift Wall Street's attention away from volatile hardware sales and toward more predictable revenue from services such as the App Store and Apple Music.

Yet the milestone comes as the nine-year-old iPhone loses some momentum. Analysts expect iPhone sales to fall by about 15%-18% year-on-year. Apple is struggling with what chief executive Tim Cook called “strong macroeconomic headwinds” that have made some consumers reluctant to upgrade more quickly, as well as low-cost competition in Asia and a resurgence in Samsung, whose Galaxy S7 outsells the iPhone 6S in the US.

via:FT Chinese