“Ten years ago, no one could have imagined that Steve Jobs’ creation would have such an impact on Apple,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “Today, the iPhone represents more than 60% of Apple’s revenue, which leads many to see Apple as, first and exclusively, the iPhone company. But is it really? Did the iPhone really change Apple so dramatically?”
“During the most recent Xmas quarter, Apple sold slightly fewer than 80 million iPhones, about 900,000 a day. Obligingly, a day has 86,400 seconds, so we round up to 90,000 to get a production yield of ten iPhones per second,” Gassée writes. “Let’s assume that it takes about 15 minutes (rounded up to 1,000 seconds) to assemble a single iPhone. How many parallel production pipes need to accumulate ten phones a second? 1,000 divided by 1/10 equals…10,000! Ten thousand parallel pipes in order to output ten phones per second.”
“We can juggle the numbers, but it’s still difficult to comprehend the scale and complexity of the iPhone production machine, to build a reliable mental representation,” Gassée writes. “Did the unimaginable iPhone production process change Apple? With numbers so large, how could it not? … Just in time for the iPhone’s ten year commemoration, we have a new book: The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Gassée writes of this latest book about Apple, “the obvious disconnection with easily ascertained facts casts a shadow on the author’s credibility and motivations.”
SEE ALSO:
Steve Jobs proves even the smartest executives need help making decisions – June 19, 2017
Did Phil Schiller really want a physical keyboard on iPhone? – June 16, 2017
imagine apple selling 80,000,000 macintoshes per quarter.
don’t laugh. i see with iPad pros added to macs, i see this as doable. 🙂
Apple would be the largest company on the planet by far if they did this…….
The problem is if you have the Mac, say any MacBook, what do you *need* the iPad for? You don’t. It’s a great device, but it’s superfluous. Most people don’t need to carry more than one computer. So likely, if the iPad works for you, you won’t buy the Mac. Sure some of use use both, but most people who have both tend to use the iPad for mobile content consumption.
macOS is in every way what I need from Apple. IOS is not.
What you’re saying makes sense to most normal people but makes no sense at all to Wall Street. It’s believed that one person should own every device Apple makes otherwise, it’s considered a failure. I’d certainly prefer a MacBook Pro to an iPad mainly because I prefer devices with a keyboard. It has nothing to do as to whether I think the iPad isn’t innovative enough. If my budget is limited, I’m going to buy the product I think I can get the most use out of.
I’m sure iPad sales have fallen because most consumers don’t have enough money to constantly collect devices that aren’t going to be used enough. Initial iPad sales were likely made by people testing if they could replace their then current devices with a tablet. Many have found out they can’t and iPad sales continue to fall. I don’t think Apple can be blamed for that. If a product is expensive then you have to be sure you want to commit. I don’t think there’s anything Apple can do to change that reasoning. Buy both? In most cases, I don’t think so.
If consumers only want to use a tablet for mobile content consumption then they might as well buy some cheaper Amazon tablet or something in that range of cost. They sure don’t need an iPad Pro for that purpose.
Why the news media and tech geniuses don’t understand simple fact this is beyond me.
The iPhone straight up changed culture in general! Smart phones are all over the media and they are all iPhones! Apple really did change the world with this.