
Apple celebrates one billion iPhones - ingve
http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2016/07/apple-celebrates-one-billion-iphones.html
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FreedomToCreate
My father is still using an iPhone 4, 6 years after its launch and is now
thinking of upgrading to a 7 in the fall and I have had a 5S for 2 years now
and think I can pull another 2 years before I upgrade. These phones have
longer lives then they use to but Apple sales I believe will remain steady
since some old iPhone user has to upgrade and they most likely will pick an
iPhone. There isn't much reason to switch to Android at this point.

The only thing that could take them off there perch is another revolutionary
device showing up on the scene, but I think that won't happen for another
decade.

~~~
coldtea
Plus, for all the talk of "innovation" and all thrown around, has any other PC
or smartphone vendor really done anything industry changing the last 15 years?

I mean except putting out similar devices to ones Apple popularized (and
notice how I didn't say invented)...

I've seen Glass that went nowhere, Surface being an attempt at iPad (and
capped at 1M unit sales or so), some smart watches that all together sold only
1/10th what the Apple Watch did (and are nothing to write home about anyway),
anything else?

(In software and services of course, Google and others have frequently
produced new stuff that spawned imitators).

I can only think of Amazon Echo -- but has than really sold that well, or is
mostly a media thing?

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seibelj
I work for a very wealthy man, and he bought everyone in the company an Amazon
Echo because he thought it was a fascinating device. Honestly I agree, it's a
very clever gadget and I constantly find more things to use it for. For
instance, I just fit out my apartment with Phillips Hue lights, and when I
walk in the door I ask Alexa to turn on the lights, and the whole place lights
up. Give it a try

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stephenr
I don't understand the obsession with voice control.

If you seriously can't just turn on a light switch, wouldn't you just want
your phone to use geo-fencing to automatically turn on the lights when you get
home _AND_ it's night time?

Then again, I don't understand a lot of this home automation stuff personally.
If we come home and it's hot, we turn on the air conditioner. If it's dark, we
turn on the lights. These are hardly difficult tasks for a child, much less an
adult.

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noblethrasher
In the case of the Hue (and presumably other smart LEDS), you can have
multiple scenes, which _is_ a killer app for voice control.

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stephenr
I think we have very different uses for lightbulbs.

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elorant
It would be interesting to know how many of those phones are actually active
as we speak. What happens to old generation iPhones? Are they sold to users
that can't afford buying a new one or do they stay in a drawer as a legacy
item the same way old laptops do?

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pcunite
I have an iPhone 4 sitting atop a bookshelf gathering dust. I have it for the
rare test session.

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dankohn1
Here's my iPhone 3 that my family checks the weather on every morning on the
way out the door:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx1uyob87ticj2i/IMG_2315.jpg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx1uyob87ticj2i/IMG_2315.jpg?dl=0)

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camillomiller
1 billion unit of a device like the iPhone. Let it set in just a second.

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the_economist
1 billion iPhones * average selling price of $650 = $650 billion dollars in
sales.

Pretty impressive!

~~~
guelo
iPhones' gross profit margin is estimated at around 45%, 30% for the SE.

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coldcode
Obligatory Steve Balmer reference: [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2007/04/ballme...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2007/04/ballmer-says-iphone-has-no-chance-to-gain-significant-
market-share/) For some reason the original USA today interview isn't coming
up.

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eyelidlessness
The Ars article is probably a better link, because it shows that Ballmer's
position was uncontroversial in technology circles at the time. With hindsight
it's obvious that the iPhone would be a success, because the entire smartphone
industry is now modeled after the UI and interaction model of iOS. But that
was a really tough thing to imagine 10 years ago.

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lifeisstillgood
A16Z's Ben Evans talks about the order of magnitude shifts in computers sold -
100,000 mini computers, 1bn PCs over 20 years and 4.5bn smartphones in what, 7
years? (that's last years figures). We should be passing 7bn soon.

A smartphone for every person on the planet.

I occasionally ramble about a golden future for humankind. It's a small chance
we shall get there, ending poverty, war, disease, maintaining liberty and
democracy.

It's one of those "so many ways to mis-step" issues.

But if I am honest, having everyone on the planet able to talk to everyone
else on the planet seems like a good "safety rope" on the journey. Smartphones
are helping that.

But still that's a mind blowing statistic.

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duaneb
> I occasionally ramble about a golden future for humankind.

What, filled with landfills of iphones? The hope to "improve" or "advance"
humanity is the most nauseating part of silicon valley. Technology does not
necessarily make the world a better place. In fact, it has actively
accelerated the burn rate of our collective resources. Meanwhile, there is
zero indication anyone is living a better life than they did before.

~~~
TuringNYC
I wont say technology is without cost, but i'll give you an example of
humanity advancing -- near-free communication. In college (1996), i craved
speaking to my mom, even for 5 minutes. But it cost about a week's student
salary to speak for 5 minutes long distance. We just didn't. We'd speak for 1
minute ever 2 weeks or so. It was incredibly painful.

Towards the end of college, that cost went to nearly zero. Today it is
essentially zero. I hope to speak to my kids plenty when they are in college.

Some people say...you are speaking about nickles and dimes here. But they fail
to understand that for many people, $10 will bring their bank balance below
zero.

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duaneb
Communication is a problem invented by humans—nobody said you needed to leave
home.

Furthermore, the cost of talking to your mother—global industrial production
lines, addiction to technology, and the loss of social skills—is extremely
hard to weigh. I land firmly on the side of luddite—I value sustainability and
social intimacy over convenience. However, it is not even clear that the
average techie considers the above problems at all, let alone major ones.

So—again, you're just assuming that I would consider communication worth what
we're doing to our children and our planet. It is emphatically not worth it
and does not improve quality of life except for problems you cause in the
first place.

~~~
specialist
A luddite with +5207 karma.

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WesleyJohnson
An iPhone 6's dimensions are 5.44 x 2.64 x 0.27 inches. If you laid them flat
on a football field, orienting them the same direction as the field, you could
fit roughly 661 between in columns between endzones and 727 in rows between
sidelines. That would give you a single "layer" of 480547 phones. To reach a
billion, you'd need 2080 layers. At 0.27 inches thick, that would rise 561
inches into the air, or nearly 47 feet. That's a 4 story building plus an NBA
player.

Hopefully that math checks out.

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flukus
Can we stick to ISO units please, like how many times they would reach the
moon if we laid them end on end.

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captaincrowbar
I believe the standard SI unit for this sort of thing is the Olympic swimming
pool, but I think we can allow the use of football fields in a forum where
many users are still familiar with the US customary system.

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lucaspiller
As a European I started reading football and assumed "soccer". I have no idea
how big an Amaerica football field is in comparison.

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vacri
100 yards long, not including endzones, and 53.33' yards wide. Convenient, eh?

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camillomiller
The day will come, dear Americans, when you will have to finally get your
measuring sh*t together! :)

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chj
I guess at least 30% of them are not being used right now as they are not
supported by the latest OS. What a waste.

The industry has a problem that we are not trying to optimize software so that
we can do more with less hardware, instead, we make more powerful hardware to
ousted old hardware, with the help of more complex software.

~~~
camillomiller
Many ended up in some landfill or lie in obscure drawers, but many of them may
have been recycled/upcycled. Say what you want about Apple but their recycling
& sustainability program is really a gem. Lisa Jackson rocks.

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WizzleKake
How many of these are in landfills?

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jamroom
Probably less than you would think - even older iPhones have fairly decent
resale value.

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menelaus35
How big is a billion? If you start counting and increment per second,it takes
nearly 32 years (more than that) to complete. I think it's a big number for a
product to sell that much. If you consider the world population, that makes it
even more dramatic. Big accomplishment.

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ChuckMcM
This is nice, seems like it is trying to distract from the quarterly results
(13% drop in net income from the same 9 months last year) though.

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bdcravens
Probably, and to refocus attention on iPhone, since the source of that drop is
probably reduced MBP sales.

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eyelidlessness
iPhone, iPad and Mac sales all have dropped; the iPhone drop was 50% greater
(proportionally) than the Mac drop.

It's likely that Apple wants to continue to focus attention on the iPhone, not
because of MBP sales, but because the iPhone continues to make up more than
half of Apple's revenue (and probably a greater proportion of its profits).

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camillomiller
ITT: people not understanding how much of an outlier 2015 has been. By the
way, last quarter Apple mad ~8bln in profits. Facebook made half of that.
During the whole 2015.

Just to set things in perspective.

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Overtonwindow
I have an iPhone going back to 1 and I shuffle them around family members.
There's no reason really to upgrade, but I'm surprised it took Apple this long
considering the cult of Apple and the image factor.

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tedmiston
For perspective, the current world population is estimated to be 7–8 billion.

I'd be curious to find an estimate of only developed countries.

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bdcravens
I presume most iPhone users have owned several.

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known
Revolutionary product :)

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Overtonwindow
Wow, I'm surprised it took them this long.

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5partan
Even more important, who is the pissed of buyer of the one billionth iPhone
from last week, whose iPhone Tim Cook is holding?

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kitanata
Think differently? Woo! I'm one in a billion!

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guelo
Apple hasn't used that slogan since 2002.

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eyelidlessness
After which they began to think differently about that slogan.

