Neil HughesDuring Tuesday's conference call in which Apple's financial report for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 was discussed, the company's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, revealed that more than 160 million iOS devices have been sold as of December. The lightweight iOS operating system runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV.
Cook said he believes that iOS is an important part of Apple's success in the mobile space, especially for smartphones and tablets. He said Apple's primary competition, the Google Android mobile operating system, can't match that strategy.
"We think that our integrated approach is much better for the end user, because it takes out all of the complexity for the end user, instead of making the end user a systems integrator themselves," Cook said. "I don't know about you, but I don't know many people who want to be systems integrators."
The rate of sales for iOS devices is rapidly increasing. In fact, it was just last June that Apple crossed the 100 million milestone in terms of total iOS devices.
The top-selling iOS device for Apple is the iPhone, which moved a record 16.2 million units last quarter alone. And Apple also revealed on Tuesday that the average selling price of its smartphone is only growing over time.
In the last quarter, the iPhone ASP hit $625 with carrier subsidies, which typically cover the bulk of the cost when a consumer purchases a new phone with a two-year contract. For comparison, last quarter the iPhone had an ASP of $610, while in the third quarter of fiscal 2010 it was $595.
Even with record sales of 16.2 million iPhones in the quarter, Apple struggled to meet consumer demand. Cook, along with Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, lamented that they wished the company could have manufactured more handsets in the quarter to satisfy demand.
The iPhone accounted for $10.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, representing the largest chunk of the company's reported $26.74 billion in total revenue. The iPhone grew in sales 86 percent in the December quarter, and is now being deployed at 88 of the Fortune 100 companies.
Apple expects even greater iPhone sales in the near future, with the impending launch of a CDMA variant of the iPhone 4 on the Verizon network in the U.S., starting Feb. 10. Cook said he does not believe the new CDMA handset will reduce the average selling price of the iPhone in the current quarter, and he noted that there is pent up demand for the smartphone from customers on the largest wireless network in the U.S.
"We are truly thrilled to be working with the Verizon team," Cook said. "They have built quite a company and earned a great deal of respect from their customers, and some of them have waited a long time to get the iPhone.
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21 Comments
Assuming that flash memory is not the limiting factor in overall production, and there's no indication that it is, maybe Apple is smartly focusing production on the higher end models. If you have enough flash to make 20 million phones, but only enough LCD panels to make 15, but people will buy whichever the cheapest available model is, why not make it a little more likely that the 32 will be the cheapest available at your store of choice, rather than the 16? Like in China - why would Apple ever send anything but the highest margin phones there, until they have enough production to make the rest easily?
Truly amazing results. And as to cameronji's comment above, that most certainly is not what Apple is doin or wants to do. You don't continue to grow a successful company by not building the products want and then force them into a higher priced model. All of their manufacturing lines for all models are going full tilt.
It's called the future of computing for the masses.
Truly amazing results. And as to cameronji's comment above, that most certainly is not what Apple is doin or wants to do. You don't continue to grow a successful company by not building the products want and then force them into a higher priced model. All of their manufacturing lines for all models are going full tilt.
Just because it's not a good long term business strategy (duh) doesn't mean it's not an excellent short term strategy in the face of limited production. How else do you explain that average prices continue to rise?
You made three statements that you couched as fact that I challenge you to support:
1: that most certainly is not what Apple is doin
2: or wants to do
3: All of their manufacturing lines for all models are going full tilt.
Prove that any one of these is anything beyond your opinion.
I just need to relate the amazing figure of 160m iOS devices to the Google WebM video codec push. The inferior WebM will most likely not be supported on iOS and neither will equally inferior Flash wrapper/player. So, will content providers happily ignore the high-value iOS users? As far as I can tell, Apple sold an estimated 86 million of the confirmed 160 m i OS devices in calendar 2010 alone (48m iPhones+24m iPod touhes+14m iPads). Most likely the number of iOS devices sold in say 6 months from now will reach 200m. Any one big or small content provider, pushing or selling any kind of content on the 'net, gratis or premium, can ill afford to ignore an audience/market of that size. Standards will be upheld, WebM fails, H.264 rulez. (On a completely different note, my first post, yay.)