Friday marks the fifth anniversary of the iPhone, so naturally at least one research company has been busy running the numbers to see what kind of impact Apple's iconic handset has had since its debut.
AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has shipped 250 million iPhones since its debut on Friday, June 29, 2007 -- exactly five years ago this coming Friday. According to Strategy Analytics, all of those devices have racked up a cool $150 billion in cumulative revenue for Apple.
"When the first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007, George W. Bush was the president of the United States, The Wire was still on TV and your inbox was free of Groupon offers," website VoucherCodes.co.uk notes in an infographic this week. "Five years later, the iPhone has propelled Apple to world domination and set the standard for today's smartphones."
"The iPhone portfolio has become a huge generator of cash and profit for Apple," explains Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. "A quarter of a billion iPhones have been shipped cumulatively worldwide in the first five years since launch and Apple reaches its fifth birthday at the top of its game."
Although Apple Inc. has become the largest company in the world by market capitalization with their worldwide brand ranking leaping from 44th place to number one in a very short amount of time, Mawston cautions that the next five years could be "more difficult" for Apple "as the competition improves and some mobile operators become concerned about subsidies spent on the iPhone."
For now, however, Apple has good reason to sit back and celebrate its accomplishments of the last half-decade -- and maybe next week they can get to work on how to keep the iPhone great for the next five years.
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(Image courtesy of AppleInsider and VoucherCodes.co.uk)
