Apple - the numbers

Mac OS X Lion features a host of new tricks, including new multi-touch gestures. Photo / AP

OK, reality check: I have not counted these numbers up myself. I have just looked at reports. So I cannot verify the numbers, but this is what people are saying.

Apple has surged again in almost every respect. Let me start with units and end with dollars.

I will follow this blog with another posting that examines New Zealand Apple numbers in a little more detail.

First of all, Lion. I do consider this a full upgrade, and here's why. I bought mine on the App Store, downloaded it, burnt the resultant file 'Install Mac OS X Lion' to a DVD, rebooted my laptop from a customised thumb drive with a Mac OS on it, wiped my MacBook Pro's hard drive completely, made sure the drive was healthy, then dragged the 'Install Mac OS X Lion' from the DVD to the nullified MacBook Pro, then double clicked it. (You cannot run it from a DVD you just copied it to.)

And it installed, rebooting a clean Lin system. So that's hardly an update. It did not need to be installed over the latest Snow Leopard, although that's the most common method of doing so. (I had decided it was time for a massive clean-out).

OK, the numbers: Apple had one million copies of Lion downloaded the day of release. Lion has over 250 new features including more Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control (a view of everything running on your Mac); Launchpad (an iPad-like interface of all installed apps); and a completely redesigned Mail app.

Lion was simultaneously available in 123 countries.

Like I said - I did not actually count these downloads myself. So maybe Apple only sold one. But if Apple did sell only one, well... I bought it. It cost me NZ$39 and it was well worth it, as I installed it on all three Macs in the house.

Meanwhile, Apple has recently outsold Nokia smartphones. Nokia announced last week it lost US$690 million as cell phone shipments fell 20 per cent to 88.5 million units. The Finnish company's Smartphones took a worse battering, shedding a third of sales to 16.7 million handsets.

Meanwhile, Apple announced it sold 20.34 million iPhones during the same period, making it at least the No. 2 smartphone and "further defining a two-way race for smartphone dominance with Google's Android".
This was reported by Cult of Mac, a Mac fan site, so they may have been making it up because they are the spawn of Satan. You choose.

Apple's App Store recently hit fifteen billion downloads, matching the total number of song downloads over iTunes as of last month. The company stated it has paid developers over US$2.5 billion cumulatively since the App Store's inception. This was after Apple's standard 30 per cent cut. Over 15 billion Apps have been downloaded via the App Store. Apps are being downloaded at triple the rate of song tracks, one analyst said.

Apple sold over two hundred million iOS devices (iPhones, iPod touches and iPads). The number of apps on the App Store has swelled to 425,000 items, of which a 100,000 are native iPad apps. The App Store operates in ninety countries worldwide.

A ChangeWave survey of consumers looked at smart phone demand trends, including mobile OS and smart phone preferences going forward.

The survey (in June) focused on key comparisons between the Apple iOS and Google Android OS - including the impact of Apple's new iCloud service - along with the latest momentum trends for Motorola and Research in Motion.

The survey focused on the North American smart phone market (89% US respondents and 11% outside the US). The Apple iOS remained number one for the buyers surveyed, with 46% of those planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days saying they prefer to have the Apple iOS on their new phone. This was up 2 points from a March survey.

In the same sample, seventy per cent of customers using Apple's iOS reported they were Very Satisfied, with Android OS in second with 50% of Android OS users saying they're Very Satisfied.

But it was not from a very big sample: 4163 respondents.

Back to computers: Apple is nearing 11 per cent of the US computer market. IDC said in a preliminary estimate in mid July that Mac shipments went up nearly 15 percent year-to-year in the spring to put Apple at third place in the US with 10.7 percent and 1.92 million Macs sold. Much of that growth came at Acer's expense, due to "the Taiwan company's over-dependence on netbooks and failure to cope with the iPad". Its shipments dropped by more than a quarter, sinking it from third place a year ago to fifth.

Cult of Mac says Apple now sits under HP (26.9%) and Dell (22.6%) as the third largest PC company in the US, with success in retail is a huge factor in the company's overall market traction.
Sales at Apple retail outlets soared 90% in the quarter to $3.2 billion.

As USA Today reports, Apple is taking "a massive bite" out of US retail sales, citing findings by retail sales expert David Berman.

Snowballing sales of iOS gadgets and Mac sales that continue to outpace other computer makers coupled with Apple's high margins all contributed.
USA Today is not an Apple fan site. It's a US fan site.

Finally, Apple reported its third quarter results. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of US$28.57 billion (over NZ$33 billion) and record quarterly net profit of US$7.31 billion, or US$7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7% compared to 39.1% in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62% of the quarter's revenue.

Apple reckons iPhone Sales grew 142%; iPad Sales 183%. Apple sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, and this was the only down-note, as it's a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. (Why have an iPod when your iPod touch and iPhone can do much the same job, plus a lot more?)

You can read Apple's figures yourself, as I didn't get it in a secret encrypted communication from Steve Jobs.

Apple's stock surged on the data, to US$400 per share in after hours trading.

In fact, with US$76.2 billion (about NZ$88 billion) in the bank in cash as of the June quarter, Apple now has more money than the gross domestic product of almost two-thirds of the world's countries... and more than the GDP of the world's fiftiest poorest countries combined.

Computerworld has a page of Apple figures, too. Computerworld is not an Apple fan site.

So, in summary: Apple's doing OK.