We already knew the iPhone is Apple’s number one revenue generator, but it doesn’t help us visualize how big it really is until you compare it to something else. As a matter of fact, it is so big that comparing iPhone revenue to other companies’ business units wouldn’t paint a good picture. In order to really see how big of a business the iPhone is, you have to compare it to full size companies.
That’s what the folks at Business Week did. So how big is iPhone compared to Microsoft, Nike or Coca Cola?
Much bigger. That’s your answer.
Consider this: The brand’s sales haul over the last four reported quarters eclipses that of such companies as Home Depot (HD), Microsoft (MSFT), Target (TGT), Goldman Sachs (GS), Amazon (AMZN), PepsiCo (PEP), Comcast (CMCSA), Dell (DELL), Google (GOOG), Pfizer (PFE), and UPS (UPS).
If this single product were its own company in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, IPhone Inc. would outsell 474 of those companies—ranking between Wells Fargo (WFC) ($90.5 billion) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC) ($84.9 billion). The iPhone’s $88.4 billion in annualized revenue tops 21 of the 30 component companies in the Dow Jones industrial average—it would be the ninth-biggest stock in the Dow 30.
Apple naysayers will probably manage to twist this into bad news, but numbers don’t lie.