Visualizing Apple’s Quarterly Results

Fantastic tool by Francesco Schwarz for visualizing Apple unit sale and revenue growth over the past decade.

I stumbled across this earlier today when I asserted that the iPhone is now far more popular and profitable then the iPod ever was. Figured I should double check that, just to make sure. Not only is it true, but after last quarter it’s not even close. iPod unit sales followed a fairly regular pattern: about 10 million units sold per quarter for the first nine months of each calendar year, then a little over 20 million units sold each holiday quarter. Apple sold just under 23 million iPods in Q109 (the 2008 holiday quarter) — until this last quarter, that was the highest-ever quarterly unit sales number for an Apple product segment. Not only did the iPhone break the 30-million mark last quarter, but with a grand total of 37 million it came damn close to breaking the 40-million mark. Think about that: Apple had never sold 30 million of anything in a quarter and almost sold 40 million iPhones.

Now think about what happens if iPad sales continue to grow at their current trajectory.

★ Tuesday, 31 January 2012