Even sceptics would agree, that’s a lot of iPhones: Apple just said it sold 5.2m of them in the three months through June.
True, it’s not as many as the company sold when it introduced the iPhone 3G a year ago, a blockbuster 6.9m units in the initial quarter. But the 3G had just shy of three months to help rack up the overall shipment numbers.
The iPhone 3GS went on sale on June 19, with only 8 days to go in the fiscal third quarter.We still don’t know how many of the phones sold in the quarter just-ended were the new ones, priced at $199 and $299, or the now old-school 3Gs. But the sense is that they sold briskly as well after Apple slashed the price to $99, also in mid-June.
Whatever the mix, it was certainly profitable. The phones were the main reason Apple creamed Wall Street expectations and reported a 15 per cent jump in net income in a terrible economy.
Mac sales were fine, even up a little from a year ago. But Apple is less and less a computer company in the usual sense of the word. In the third quarter of 2008, Mac sales provided more than half of Apple’s revenue from hardware and songs meant to be played on them.
This quarter, iPhone and music sales easily topped Macs, according to RBC estimates—and when it comes to the bottom line, that’s an enormous boost.
