“Apple just reported one of the best quarters in its history, with a spectacular performance by the iPhone—we sold more phones than RIM,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a statement today.
Jobs made a rare special appearance during Apple’s conference call to discuss the company’s stellar financial results and said of the recent crop of iPhone wannabes, “We are way out ahead of everybody and, with the most talented people in the world, we’ll stay that way. We are committed to making iPhone the best value for customers.”
“Apple beat RIM,” Jobs said. “Apple outsold RIM last quarter… after only 15 months in the market.” 6.9m iPhones vs. 6.1m total RIM BlackBerry phones. “RIM is a good company that makes good products. Beating them is remarkable,” Jobs added.
Jobs also reported that, measured by revenue, Apple has become the world’s 3rd largest mobile phone supplier:
1. Nokia, $12.7b
2. Samsung, $5.9b
3. Apple, $4.6b
4. Sony/Ericsson , $4.2b
5. LG, $3.4b
6. Moto, $3.2b
7. RIM, $2.1b
And, now, we fire up iCal and reveal some of the many wonders it holds!
In a perfect world, the next quote you’d hear from the following buffoons would be, “You want fries with that?”
• “[iPhone] just doesn’t matter anymore. There are now alternatives to the iPhone, which has been introduced everywhere else in the world. It’s no longer a novelty.” – Eamon Hoey, Hoey and Associates, April 30, 2008
• “We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008
• “Microsoft, with Windows Mobile/ActiveSync, Nokia with Intellisync, and Motorola with Good Technology have all fared poorly in the enterprise. We have no reason to expect otherwise from Apple.” – Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams analyst, March 07, 2008
• “[Apple should sell 7.9 million iPhones in 2008]… Apple’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year is optimistic.” – Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research analyst, February 22, 2008
• “What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” – Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007
• Motorola’s then-Chairman and then-CEO Ed Zander said his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” – Ed Zander, May 10, 2007
• “The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.” – Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, April 02, 2007
• “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007
• “Even if [the iPhone] is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment.” – Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, March 14, 2007
• “I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007
• “There’s an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting… I think people overreacted to it — there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.” – Greg Winn, Telstra’s operations chief, February 15, 2007
• “Consumers are not used to paying another couple hundred bucks more just because Apple makes a cool product. Some fans will buy [iPhone], but for the rest of us it’s a hard pill to swallow just to have the coolest thing.” – Neil Strother, NPD Group analyst, January 22, 2007
• “I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.” – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007
• “The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple.” – Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, January 18, 2007
• “[Apple’s iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007
• “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007
• “iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, January 13, 2007
• “I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007
• “Apple will launch a mobile phone in January, and it will become available during 2007. It will be a lovely bit of kit, a pleasure to behold, and its limited functionality will be easy to access and use. The Apple phone will be exclusive to one of the major networks in each territory and some customers will switch networks just to get it, but not as many as had been hoped. As customers start to realise that the competition offers better functionality at a lower price, by negotiating a better subsidy, sales will stagnate. After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish. The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it.” – Bill Ray, The Register, December 26, 2006
• “The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006
• “Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006
• “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” – Ed Colligan, Palm CEO, November 16, 2006
As a postscript to MDN’s excellent archive of frigtard punditry, below is a copy of a note I sent a moment ago to Rex Crum of Marketwatch:
Rex, on February 22, you published an article titled, “Could the iPhone drag down Apple?”
SUBHEAD: “Analyst calls company’s sales targets for device ‘optimistic'”
(Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/more-iphone-concerns-likely-weigh/story.aspx?guid={8018A978-77C2-461B-B557-9E763C38EBB9})
In your article, you quoted Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research analyst with the following passage:
“Sacconaghi pointed to the fact that Apple’s iPhone sales averaged 180,000 units a week in the last quarter of 2007, which historically is Apple’s busiest business period of the year. Based on that estimate, Sacconaghi has forecast the sale of 7.9 million iPhone devices in 2008.”
“Apple’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year is optimistic, particularly if Apple insists on carrier revenue sharing without significant price cuts or new model introductions,” Sacconaghi said.”
Of interest is the fact that as of today, Apple announced that the company had already sold more than 10 million iPhones, well before their promised date of the end of the year. Specifically, Apple’s quarterly iPhone units sold were 6,892,000 compared to 1,119,000 in the year-ago-quarter.
You might want to contact Mr. Sacconaghi to ask why his projection was both so pessimistic and inaccurate. It appears that he should be eating his words…
I live for moments like this. If I could have contacted the asshat analyst myself, I would.
Its strange (but really really funny) that all these so called informed journalists, have the misconception, that the iPhone was made by the likes of Microsoft, if that were true, then I would agree with em, talk about morons… sheesh, love ya MDN (great compilation)
Top Gear Season 10 on iTunes!!!
YES !!!
R2 – I’m here. Thanks for caring for my safety.
Seriously, doesn’t anyone question how no iphone for two months before the 3G launch affects demand? Of course no one here.
Great quarter all the way around but trashing RIM is a joke. They are more formidable than you think and they will continue their ascent next to Apple.
Totally nailed it with this post. It’s amazing to see that four years later Rim is the biggest company in the world due to being so formidable. Those fools, trashing RIM like that. Great call!!
> Apple stating their sales goal of 10 million iPhones by end of 2008 (later amended to just calendar year 2008)!
It was never “amended.” It was ALWAYS 10 million units in calendar year 2008. And it’s been met with two to three months to spare (depending on when Apple actually sold that 10 millionth iPhone).
@European,
Honestly, if euros think the camera in any cellphone is decent, then they are deluding themselves by cellphone marketers. I’ve seen the pics from Nokia’s high-end cellphones, and they are crap compared to even the cheapest digital cameras. Too much compression and too much noise, due to the small CMOS or CCD chip used. It’s physics. Small chip = noisy images. In fact, because the noise can be so bad, an 8Mp chip will have no more measurable resolution than a 5Mp one. Of course, the cellphone marketers will never tell you that.
Video recording, just jailbreak your iPhone and you can have video recording. You want it, you can get it.
MMS. This will never appear on the iPhone. In the US, MMS is typically extra. Like ringtones. The wireless carriers bleed you to death by a thousand cuts. Apple uses email to send images, to avoid the MMS surcharge. I know, your feature phone doesn’t have email, so you can’t get pics from your friend’s iPhone, but there are ways around it. I’m sure some smart european has figured out how to send iPhone pics to someone’s MMS account.
All the analysts are morons.
Stevie Ballmer is a moron.
Billy Gates is a moron.
Eric Willard is a moron.
La la la la la la la la….
I guess Apple keeps on growing the number of “fanboy” customers, which will annoy many.
Maybe Microsoft should spend even more on advertising.
You’re the best MDN!!
BTW was it Ed Colligan who when asked:
“how do you deal with iphone?” replied
“how do they deal with us?” ?
What is that Jackass’s name?
Thanks MDN. Those comments from idiots make fun reading.
Keep on keeping track for us.
JUst as I predicted
http://financial-alchemist.blogspot.com/2008/10/apple-to-surpass-its-iphone-sales-goal.html
No incorrect predictions from Enderle?
Or don’t you have the disk capacity to hold them all?
Maybe this is the best ever article on MDN!
Way to go MDN, you guys are the bees knees!
Keep tracking these f**wits!
@crazylegs
Thanks for telling us what we think, arrogant f*wit.
You stand corrected, however, as Steve Jobs did not “diss” on Rim, he complimented them. And I am pretty sure most people here would agree with Steve.
It’s not about Rim, it’s about Apple. Nobody here, except you apparently, cares about Rim.
Manners and brains before you comment please…
There’s nothing like the taste of crow in the morning.
“The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006
Rod Bare? Are you freakin’ kidding me? With a name like that, this guy is definitely in the wrong industry.
Hey all .. I’m here and is this really a reason to get all excited? Apple’s latest device competing against 2-3 year old Blackberry finally outsold it by a .8 margin? Possible every Blackberry owner / those wanting a device are awaiting the US release of Bold, Storm and Kickstart? This is like the old fanboy days of SNES vs. Genesis. Things go in cycles and after a new product launch you always see a surge in sales.
The fact that RIM continues to sell plenty of Curve, Pearls and other models speaks to itself.
I support mobility in the enterprise and yeah RIM is the gold standard I judge any mobile device (FOR OUR USAGE) and Apple is by far lacking in the things I care about: Security, Management of devices. The fact that anyone could jailbreak a device and bypass the Exchange ActiveSync policy should be sufficient reason for ANY company to reconsider supporting this device beyond basic email access.
Now me as a consumer a jailbroken Iphone is pretty darn slick and so much fun beyond the “sanitized” AppStore drivel they push out.
This isn’t a race it’s the birth of a new platform.
Shado Control, are you serious? Who peed in your wheaties? Telling you what you think? Huh? I guess you didn’t see that I was responding specifically to R2’s comments?
What a weird vitriolic response, like you’re a school yard bully looking for someone to pick on – but here you can cover your face and not take responsibility. Really weak stuff.
HEY!!!!!!!
How bout that Zune!!!!!
That WHAT?
You Know Zune!!!!! the iPod KILLER!!!!
hheheheheheeh
I am just so very happy for Jobs & Co. they earned IT! and its only going to get BETTER!!!
iJah420 says
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@ CheekyGit
Do the shows on iTunes contain the news? I’ve heard they’ve taken that out of the US version. Do you know if that is true?
Wow sensitive or what?
It is true that some high price claims were proven right with the greater uptake on the subsidized iPhone 2.0 at the lower price points.
Also many estimated sales numbers were based on an unsubsidized sale price. Who knew Apple would see the light and market the iPhone like all other cell phones are marketed?
Not all of those iCal’d comments were made by complete idiots.
And the “Award for Dumbest” goes to…
Guys… pls vote whom we should give this award to…
When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006
Someone’s getting the “crow special” on the occasion: Extra rare, feathers and all…
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@KenC
Those are actual sales, you don’t know what you are talking about.
With their PCs, Apple only counts actual sales to actual customers, they always have done it this way and probably always will. With the iPhone they did it the same way, but with the advent of the 3G model, it is being sold to the carriers, not to the end customers. So you are right in that the phones need not necessarily be in any customers hands, but wrong that these are not “sales.” They are sold phones, that the carrier cannot return or “unsell.” The carrier then sells them at a discount to the consumer with the contract.
Apple’s iPhone sales are all real actual sales to customers, it’s just the customers have changed recently.
a couple choice naysayer quoted from daring fireball today. (He sent me to this list in fact)