This coming Friday marks the fifth anniversary of Apple’s iPhone, the device that turned the mobile industry upside down. Today, the iPhone is bigger than most companies on the planet and no, I’m not exaggerating. The phone rakes in an astounding $25 billion of revenue per quarter for a run rate of a staggering $100 billion a year…
Together the iPhone and iPad account for more than three-quarters of Apple’s revenues. This is all coming from market research firm Strategy Analytics, out today with a couple of interesting tidbits related to the iPhone’s performance so far.
According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple has generated US$150 billion of cumulative revenues for its iPhone family in the first five years since launch in June 2007. A quarter of a billion iPhones have been shipped cumulatively worldwide.
This is just mind blowing.
The iPhone 4S has been a particularly big sales driver, helping Apple sell 35.1 million and 37.1 million units in the March and holiday quarter, respectively.
iPhone sales have been rising a lot during the past twelve months that saw Apple sell close to a hundred million units worldwide.
And according to Henry Blodget, writing for Business Insider, quarterly iPhone revenue alone now eclipses Microsoft’s entire revenue. The handset also files as a more lucrative business than Google or General Electric, generating at least $30 billion of profit annually.
And the most telling metric of all: the iPhone has turned Apple into the most valuable and profitable company on the planet.
And the key reason why the iPhone has become so popular, regardless of its industrial design and elegant operating system?
Apps.
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That being said, it’s gonna be interesting seeing how the iPhone fares over the next five years.
There are emerging signs that the iPhone’s next five years could get tougher. Some mobile operators are becoming concerned about the high level of subsidies they spend on the iPhone, while Samsung is expanding its popular Galaxy portfolio and providing Apple with more credible competition.
We also know from WWDC keynote stats that Apple sold more than 365 million iOS devices to date. The App Store has a cool 650,000 apps, 225,000 of which are tailored specifically for the iPad.
Apple’s store has clocked in 30 billion app downloads (excluding updates) and Apple has paid developers more than $5 billion from App Store revenue.
And my favorite metric: Apple has more than 400 million App Store accounts with credit cards enabled for 1-click buying, making Cupertino the biggest seller on the Internet.
This is extremely important should Apple decided to enter the mobile payments business, as rumored.
Did you find the iPhone numbers surprising?