Apple today reported monster earnings for the lucrative holiday quarter.
One of the points in Apple’s press release that immediately stuck out for me is the fact that the company surpassed 1.3 billion active devices in the wild in January of this year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said:
We’ve achieved a significant milestone with our active installed base of devices reaching 1.3 billion in January. That’s an increase of 30% in just two years, which is a testament to the popularity of our products and the loyalty and satisfaction of our customers.
In January of last year, Apple announced it had sold one billion cumulative iPhone units.
It’s not clear how many iPhones are being actively used because Apple likes to keep these things secret, but today’s milestone applies to all the devices they sell, not just iPhones.
#iPhone 1-9-07
10 years and over a billion sold pic.twitter.com/tmd97kFauM— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) January 9, 2017
In wasn’t until January 2015 that Apple celebrated shipping its one billionth iOS device.
Independent analysts like Asymco’s Horace Dediu predicted there’d be a billion iOS devices in use by the end of 2018, but Apple has clearly one-upped analysts with today’s announcement.
1 Billion iOS devices shipped!!
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) January 27, 2015
It’s not totally clear what exactly Apple means by “active installed base,” but I’m guessing they’re only counting hardware associated with an Apple ID/iCloud account and connected to App Store from time to time (meaning, excluding older devices collecting dust in drawers).
Here are this quarter’s numbers compared to those from the year-ago quarter:
- Revenue: $88.3 billion versus $78.4 billion
- iPhones: 77.3 million versus 78.3 million
- iPads: 13.2 million versus 13.1 million
- Macs: 5.1 million versus 5.37 million
For guidance, iOS 11 was used on 65% of supported devices as of January 19.
What’s your take on the latest Apple milestone?
Sound off with your thoughts and analysis in the comments.