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 Stephen Withers turns his gaze on the world of Apple, with
detours into other aspects of IT and communications as they catch his
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Technology news and Jobs 
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple hits 10 million iPhone sales!
Our Blogs Core Dump Apple hits 10 million iPhone sales! | Apple hits 10 million iPhone sales! |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 07 October 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Now it seems the joke may be on them. Since August 1, a project has been under way to estimate the iPhone 3G production rate by tracking the IMEI numbers of recently sold handsets. The IMEI uniquely identifies any GSM/3G mobile, and because part of the code should be allocated serially it can be used to determine the number manufactured of that model. The project's results are summarised in a Google Docs spreadsheet and the latest estimate is that 9.19 million have been produced. 'Produced' isn't the same as 'sold'. But here's an encapsulated version of the reasoning applied by Andy Zaky and Turley Muller at Bullish Cross: even if 1.5 million iPhones are unsold to allow for production rejects, inventory, etc - and that's a very generous allowance - that leaves 7.6 million. Add the 2.4 million original iPhones already sold in 2008, and there's the 10 million iPhones. But it's only early October, which leaves nearly three months - including the Christmas/holiday buying season - to go. The project's current estimate is that by the end of the year production could exceed 17 million. That might be a bit optimistic - see page two. |
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