iPhone Sales Nearing The 1 Billion Mark

After a run of rough headlines, Apple is nearing a pretty big piece of good news. The world’s most successful smartphone maker is on the cusp of selling its billionth iPhone.

The billionth iPhone mark is anticipated to come sometime around when Apple reports its Q3 earnings tomorrow (July 26), when the firm is widely expected to announce a three-month sales total of 40 million for its most popular device. That would bring the total number of iPhones sold to just under a billion at 987 million.

Since the widely held analyst expectation is that Apple will sell another 40 million during the current quarter — or 13 million units a month — that means that the iPhone is poised to either have already hit the 1 billion mark or to hit it this week.

“A billion is the new million,” said Benedict Evans, partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

By comparison, Apple had sold 397 million iPods when it stopped reporting sales in 2014.

“Microsoft wanted to put a computer on every desk,” Evans said. “The vision of the smartphone is now a computer in every pocket. We are now at the scale of everyone on Earth.”

The one billion figure for the iPhone also dovetails nicely with a claim Apple made earlier this year that 1 billion of its devices (including iPads, Apple Watches, Macs and Apple TVs) are already in active use. It also comes as Apple is sorely in need of some better news, since the iPhone’s neverending forward trajectory seems to be coming to an end.

Strong economic headwinds, particularly in China, have slowed the pace of people upgrading their phones, and Apple has ever more aggressive competition from Samsung on the high end and dozens of discount smartphone makers at the low end.

“It’s pretty clear the replacement cycle for the iPhone has lengthened,” Evans said.

Apple is expected to continue its leadership position, with some expecting big things out of the iPhone 7.

“Investors will increasingly look forward to the 2017 iPhone cycle,” Morgan Stanley wrote. “We see several potentially revolutionary features, especially in display and battery life, that Apple could launch in just over a year from now.”