With the release of its quarterly earnings earlier today, Apple revealed that it had sold 37.04M iPhones in fiscal Q1 of 2012. Those numbers are massive, far bigger than any other manufacturer and beyond industry estimates.
Following the announcement, there was an interesting statistic shared on Twitter by designer and author of Mobile First, Luke Wroblewski:
There are more iPhones sold per day (402k) than people born in the World per day (300k). twitter.com/#!/asymco/stat…
— Luke Wroblewski (@lukew) January 24, 2012
The 37.04M iPhone figure divided out over the period of 98 days in the quarter gives us a slightly lower number at 377.9K sold every day, but it’s still higher than the world’s average birth rate which clocks in at 371K per day.
If those numbers are correct, and we believe that they are, Apple is now making iPhones at a rate that exceeds the amount of babies that humans produce on earth every day. This number is likely to be transient as the birth rate isn’t static and Apple’s first quarter normally gets a bump in sales from the Christmas shopping season which subsides in the second.
But still, it’s a pretty staggering statistic, especially when you consider that Apple is selling every one of those devices it can make. In fact, demand for iOS devices was exceeded again in the quarter, even as Apple announced that it had sold some 315M total.
“We thought we were setting bold bets,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said about iPhone demand, “but it turns out we didn’t bet high enough.”


















I love it very much! You do realize this is not so much? <a href="http://www.angrybirdsrio.biz/">angry birds rio</a>
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LikeThis picturizes something wrong is going on with ewaste!
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Likehaha..... so you're saying that Android at 700,000 activations a day is more like TWO SMARTPHONES for every person born each day! :DDD
btw.... just so you know Samsung sold more SMARTPHONES itself over 2011 than Apple by an estimated 3 Million SMARTPHONES.
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LikeWhat about 700k new Android per day?
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Likemmathieum "...700,000 Android devices activated every day"
Devices!Not just phones...and all like chinese tablets with android...so really?let's count good things...and yes,iPhone price is much higher...so it must be more Android's sold than iPhone...because one iPhone 4S cost like 5 cheaper models with Android...everything is clear here:)
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LikeRadiacija mmathieum Well actually now its 850k new Android devices "powered By Google" activated every day.
That means than Android devices shipping without proprietary Google services (Google Play, Maps, Gmail ...) don't count.
You can count anyway you want, Android is the most popular smartphone operating system on earth with nearly 50% market share.
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LikeI think this piece is totally misleading link bait. It's an impressive stat and all but we're looking at a three month time period. We're not repopulating the world these things as 10 years from now we'll be talking about another Apple device. Cute idea but no.
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LikeYou do realize this is not so much? Let's put it this way: if every person was to buy a single phone their entire life, and they were only allowed to buy an iPhone, it would take Apple close to 80 years (at this rate) to achieve full penetration.
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LikeTypo: Should say 315M iOS devices sold, not 135M.
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Like@Erik Ackermann Thanks Erik, looks like I transposed that, I'll correct it.
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LikeYou watch, soon enough Humans will be extinct, and iPhones will rule the world.
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LikeKeiron Lowe
In dystopian Earth, iOS device buy you!
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LikeConversation from Facebook
now if we could only find a way to reduce the rugrats' # growths!
Could mean in a long term perspective that Apple can't sell more than 300k a day if every newborn buys one iphone....but with an upgrade by these kids every second year... ;-)