When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs himself set a target that the Jesus phone would sell 10 million units in 2008. While he did achieve that with many months to go in 2008, (of course with a new $199 pricing for the iPhone 3G to help him). Fast forward to 2009 and you see that Apple sells around 7.4 million iPhones last quarter and for Q1 (Oct-Dec) Digitimes is reporting that Apple is well on track to sell 10 million iPhones! To extent the boost comes from new countries like Korea and China along with new carrier tieups in UK & Canada. However, the majority push IMO comes due to the holiday season.
In the third quarter of 2009, sales of the Apple iPhone 3GS far exceeded expectations, and sales are expected to reach 10 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. iPhone chip suppliers have benefited from this development. Furthermore, other terminal vendors made advance procurements to prepare for the peak season in the fourth quarter. [Digitimes].
Just to give a comparison, worlds second largest cellphone maker Samsung has sold 10 million touchscreen phones in 2009 with almost all of them comprising of the Star and Corby series which are entry level phones (cheapest touchscreens with least features). That should tell you how well the 3GS is doing, given the authority it commands as a breakthrough / revolutionary product. I would still be interested to see how it does against the upcoming Google phone and others!
Given that we estimated before that iPhone could sell a strong 80 million units in 2012, 10 million a quarter in 2010 / 2011 looks fair. But is the smartphone boom going to be dominated by the iPhone and Android so badly? Our guess is as good as yours 🙂