Steve Jobs once said, Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. January 9th, 2007 was the day Apple reinvented the phone, and fortunately enough for Jobs, the day he introduced a product that really would change everything. From analyzing five years worth of sales data, ingenuity, patent protection and even the future of the iPhone it can be concluded that Apples incredible gadget has risen from a flagship device, to a world renowned and highly innovative product that leads the smartphone market across the globe. Furthermore it proves that with hard work, and a bit of creativity, a person or even a company can work from the ground up to reach sure success.
Although introduced via keynote to the public in early 2007, the original iPhone took over 6 months to reach the end consumer in the summer of that year. The device was a two and a half year work in progress with collaboration between Apple and AT&T formerly known as Cingular Wireless. The story of how the iPhone originally came to be is a significant and important part of its past, however not something that will be touched on in this essay. Regardless I believe that it is important to take a look at the business and sales aspect of the product. More so, how incredibly well it sold, especially in its first few quarters compared to its current sales in the past year, and how sales alone have driven this device to the top.
If you try hard enough, you can picture it now. Its just near the end of Apples fiscal quarter three, and the breakthrough device, iPhone, has just been released to the public. Right off the bat, Apple finishes quarter three with a respectable 270 thousand devices off the shelf and into consumer hands. Certainly a good figure, but that doesnt even account for a months worth of sales. Quarter four presents an incredible turnaround, 1.12 million additional phones sold. With in a few months Apple has successfully launched a flagship device and sold nearly one and a half million units.
To put this in perspective I performed some research on a competitors sales data, Nokia. In quarter four of 2007, with a cellphone market share of a blasphemous forty-percent, Nokia sold 18.8 million devices. Taking into account that Nokia had tens of hundreds of models of phones both smart and non-smart, this number feels insignificant. During the first four months of the iPhone being on the market, Apple sold nearly eight-percent of a leading companys sales with just one device. Apple jumped into a market and immediately gained a presence. In contrast, jumping ahead to present times, in quarter four of 2012, Apple sold a grand total of $46.3 billion worth of various technologies, an industry record. Of that figure, 37 million iPhones were sold, a company record still held today. The launch and then success of the iPhone not only made Apple millions if not billions of dollars, but furthered innovation and product development across the board. In addition it has green-lighted new technologies and service offerings which have led Apple to recently become the most valuable company in the entire world with a valuation at $621.64 billion this past august.
