DailyTech - Report: More iOS Devices Sold in 2011 than all Macs Sold in Past 28 Years

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Gadgets Report: More iOS Devices Sold in 2011 than all Macs Sold in Past 28 Years
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - February 17, 2012 11:03 AM

7 comment(s) - last by The Raven.. on Feb 20 at 12:12 PM

iOS devices are selling like hot cakes

Apple is growing tremendously and has a huge amount of money sitting in the bank thanks in large part to the popularity of its iOS devices. Apple continues to sell every iPhone and iPad it can build and the popularity of the products doesn't seem to be waning despite increased competition.

Asymco has offered a very interesting statistic that looks at the number of iOS devices sold versus the number of Macs sold by Apple. Macs have been on the market in various forms for 28 years. According to Asymco, Apple has sold 122 million Macs over the 28-year time span.

^{[Source: Asymco]}

Since the iOS platform launched, 316 million devices running the OS had been sold by Apple. That counts iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch. One thing that isn't clear about these numbers is how exactly Asymco was able to determine the number of iPod Touches sold since that metric is bundled in with all other iPods which don't run iOS.

Asymco claims that in 2011 alone 156 million iOS devices were sold putting the number 34 million above the number of Macs sold.

Source: Asymco

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well

By kleinma on 2/17/2012 11:41:30 AM , Rating: 5

Clearly iOS is very popular, but it is also the first Apple OS you could get on an Apple device that didn't cost in the realm of 1000 bucks or more.

I see lots of people get iPhones because they are priced the same as the competition for the most part, but won't get a mac because the cost is just too high versus a similar Dell or HP laptop/desktop.

So it makes a lot of sense for these numbers, and in reality I think Apple will slowly move towards unification and more on the side of iOS than OSX, but merge the certain technologies needed.

Microsoft is basically doing the same thing with Win8. I think they said 60 or so percent of the code base in WinPhone8 will be overlap with Win8. I am sure that will move more and more towards 100% as the hardware moves forward.

Still makes it a pain for developers though. It is nice that maybe you can write iOS apps and have them work on a Mac or WinMetro apps and have them run on Windows 8 and potentially windows phone, but we still have a ton of different platforms to target. I thought that was where HTML5 was going to save the day, but it does seem as though native platform development is still king.

RE: well

By Jeremy87 on 2/17/2012 12:16:28 PM , Rating: 2

Not to mention the iOS was born in a time when people generally buy more devices.
Macs also sell a lot more now than before, they weren't outnumbered 28 to 1 during 2011. You're comparing the iOS's best year with the Mac's 28-year average.

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RE: well

By fowlerb on 2/17/2012 4:02:22 PM , Rating: 2

28-year sum**

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RE: well

By TakinYourPoints on 2/17/2012 6:56:45 PM , Rating: 2

HTML 5 development won't make sense over native development until it reaches parity in terms of raw performance and responsiveness. HTML 5 is great for the web, but native applications still win for complex applications.

On topic of the chart, the curve of Mac sales seems to correspond with the rise of the iPod and the iPhone, as well as their tight focus on laptops. It has been going more and more vertical over the last several years, so clearly their laptops are getting very popular.

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Interesting trends

By tayb on 2/20/2012 9:58:12 AM , Rating: 2

The Mac sales uptick actually started before the iPhone was released. The hardware sales are slightly above linear and then in 2004-2005 range they start to increase to an almost exponential level.

It's also interesting because the rise doesn't coincide with Vista because Vista was released in January 2007. The only thing I can see is the release of Tiger which was a rather large release in the Apple family. I may be wrong but I think Tiger brought significant changes to the dock.

Interesting to say the least. The iPhone sales numbers are just outrageous and the Mac sales are showing strong growth.

RE: Interesting trends

By tayb on 2/20/2012 10:03:56 AM , Rating: 2

Duh. After thinking about it I realized that the uptick was also right around the time that Apple ditched PowerPC in favor of x86. A perfect storm, it seems.

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