Apple hits 10 million iPhone sales!

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 07 October 2008 03:25

Business IT - Technology

Those forward estimates have previously come in a little ahead of the project's best estimates based on IMEIs reported. For example, the Week 40 projection was 9.34 million compared with 9.19 million.

And the projections seem to be based solely on rates derived from observed IMEIs, with no allowance made for changing conditions. It seems unlikely that Apple will sell (or produce) as many iPhones in the current economic climate as it would have if things were still charging ahead.

But if these numbers turn out to be anything like correct, financial analysts who predicted Apple would only sell 8 or 9 million iPhones in 2008 will be looking foolish.

There's one thing in particular that casts a shadow over the project's estimates: Apple might not be the most forthcoming company when it comes to answering journalists' questions, but it is fairly big on milestones.

It announced that one million iPhone 3Gs were sold and 10 million applications downloaded on the first weekend, and that 100 million App Store downloads occurred in less than two months.

So if Apple really had sold 10 million iPhones this year, don't you think it would have trumpeted the news to the rafters?

Perhaps Steve Jobs is waiting for the final figures to come in for 2008 so that he can really rub salt into the wounds of the doubters.