“Apple shipped the iPhone, its first iOS device, in June of 2007. By September of that year, it had sold one million,” John Paczkowski reports for ALlThingsD.
“Reporting third-quarter results in July of 2010, Apple offered its first report on cumulative iOS device sales, noting that they’d surpassed 100 million,” Paczkowski reports. “A few months later, sales had risen 20 percent to 120 million. They hit 160 million in January 2011. And according to Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, they’d reached 187 million by March. In June of this year they’d passed 200 million, giving Apple a nice, big, round number to trot out during its annual WWDC conference in June.”
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Paczkowski reports, “To date, Apple has shipped 222 million iOS devices, according to COO Tim Cook, who revealed the figure during Apple’s Tuesday earnings call. It’s hard not to look at that number without thinking in superlatives. For a new platform — established by a company that’s been in the mobile space less than five years — that is absolutely tremendous growth. And it’s a testament not just to Apple’s dominance in the space, but the significant opportunities ahead of it.”
Check out the iOS device sales chart in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “fred darbis” for the heads up.]
Five years?
Compaq may have been “first”. But Apple has been driving mobile computing forward since 1990.
But.. but.. everyone keeps saying the tide is about to turn against Apple. It’s Mac vs Windows all over again, right? RIGHT?!
Perhaps if they yell that loud enough it will make them feel better?
It IS Mac vs Windows all over again.
But this time Apple is Windows.
Apple will never be Windows. Your analogy fails in millions of different ways.
The analogy has no flaws. It is Apple vs. Windows again, and Apple is not “Windows.”
The major difference this time is mindshare. During the personal computer wars, IBM had the mindshare of IT people. We used to sit in dark rooms and chant, “No one was ever fired for choosing IBM.” We began to notice the Apple II computers that began popping up here and there, requisitioned as “office equipment” for the accounting department, and we didn’t like it. We couldn’t, however, deny the effectiveness of the Apple II with VisiCalc.
Then IBM created the IBM PC, and made their first mistake. They allowed Microsoft to lease them DOS and accept a cut of sales. It was as if Microsoft poked a hole in IBM’s money bubble and funds drained into Microsoft.
We didn’t care. The PCs had those 3 magic letters on them. IBM.
Then IBM made their second great blunder. The allowed the IBM PC to be cloned.
We bought clones because they were “IBM COMPATIBLE.”
IBM PCs and IBM Compatibles ran VisiCalc just fine, and as far as we were concerned they were all IBM computers. We didn’t have to deal with that upstart, Apple.
Consequently Microsoft was the world’s greatest industrial accident brought on by MIS love and trust of IBM, and IBM’s 2 great blunders.
This time, Apple has significant mindshare. MIS or IT as we are now called doesn’t make all the decisions. A phenomenon called consumerization is bringing Apple into the Enterprise, not just the home. That mindshare is paying off in spades.
http://strategicmac.com/2011/05/15/apple-and-the-enterprise-infiltration-through-consumerization/
The analogy is also right in a lot of ways: mindshare, adoption, market share, etc.
Sure, the analogy fails if you think the only parallels you could possibly see are things like “single hardware provider vs multiple licensed vendors” or “abusing a monopoly position to sustain dominance in the market”. If that’s the only thing you’re looking at, iOS is not the “Windows of mobile”. Android probably is.
If you’re looking at sustained dominance of the market, Apple clearly sells the “Windows of mobile”.
I understand your conclusion and reasoning, however I would argue that iOS is still more analogous to the Mac OS because it is a “closed system,” available from one company (Apple), that there are more devices running the Android OS than there are running iOS. We the technology buying public just have no allegiance to Android, not like we did to IBM. There is not back of the mind conventional wisdom that says “iOS is for creatives and Android is for business.” We buy what works best for us and we generally seem to prefer iOS over Android. Apple isn’t the 600LB gorilla when compared to Google. These are both powerful and wealthy companies. Consider that when Gates leased DOS to IBM, Microsoft was barely a fraction the size of Apple. I agree with you 100% that it is “Mac vs. Windows” again, I just don’t see Apple in the role of IBM backed Windows.
The momentum is just going the Apple way !!!
We call it a miracle just to stop it !!!!
Or perhaps, a divine intervention if there is any.
It’s the start of the Appleverse’s Big Bang.
I’ve been pulling for the downtrodden underdog for so long that I’m thinking of switching to Windows.
I remember that interview of Ballmer T Clown laughing…$500 dollars for a phone! I am sure delusional Ballmer T Clown still likes their strategy, in fact he probably likes their strategy A LOT.