RIM: 50 Million Served Since ‘99 / Apple: 30 Million Served Since 2007
by John Paczkowski
Posted on March 17, 2009 at 3:27 PM PT
Amid the firehose of announcements at this morning’s Apple event, one in particular stood out. The first real combined sales number for the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple (AAPL) has sold 30 million of them. Of those, 17 million were iPhones (13.7 million sold in 2008). The remaining 13 million were iPod touches. And that tells us three things: Apple exceeded its 10 million iPhones sold in ‘08 goal by well over 3 million. The iPod touch is not simply a defeatured iPhone, but a monster hit in its own right. And finally, the iPhone OS platform is far, far larger than anyone had thought. And it’s growing very quickly. Consider this: Research in Motion (RIMM) sold its 50 millionth BlackBerry just last month. But the device has been on the market since 1999. The iPhone and iPod touch haven’t even been on the market for a full two years yet and their sales together are more than half of what the Berry’s sold in a decade.
An apples to oranges comparison? Perhaps. But from a platform standpoint — iPhone OS to BlackBerry OS — still an interesting one.
Comments
My read on today is that Apple is so totally clicking on all cylinders with iPhone/iPod touch that the preview was a thinly disguised “block the kick” announcement.
What’s a block the kick? It is an effort to do such a good job of persuading your core constituency (in this case, developers, consumers, carriers) that any perceived momentum of the competition (read: Android, Palm Pre) pales in comparison to your own that you block the competition’s nascent momentum in its infancy.
Apple is just running up the score, lest the competition find its footing with developers, something I blogged about in:
Analysis of iPhone 3.0 SDK Developer Preview
http://bit.ly/ANdMz
Check it out if interested.
Mark
Posted by Mark Sigal at March 17th, 2009 at 4:18 pmApples and Oranges (or Blackberrys in this case).
Your comparisons paint an exaggerated picture.
First, the ipod touch does not compete with Blackberry, so the real comparison is 50 million vs. 17 million.
Second, RIM sold over 7.5 million Blackberrys last quarter which is double the number of iphones that Apple sold in the same period. Comparing the last two years and the prior 8 years in the same thought is completely misleading. RIM invented the market and built it up from nothing, so of course the earlier years yielded lower numbers. But your presentation of the numbers make it sound like Apple is gaining on RIM whereas in fact Apple is losing market share to RIM. I’m not knocking Apple. They did well in two years, but you are totally getting caught up in the ususal hype and distortion (that surrounds Apple) by presenting the numbers in this manner.
Posted by Bill Carlin at March 17th, 2009 at 5:35 pmWell my iPod touch seldom leaves my side, I used it every day at work, maintained my schedule, checked and wrote e-mails, looked up map info for clients, and used it to keep track of various documents.
That seems like PDA functionality to me. So I’d say it does compete in the same market. Just the low end of it.
I can’t see paying a large monthly fee for a blackberry package when I have WiFi in all the places that matter.
But I agree that the PDA/Smartphone market has really exploded in the last 3 years and so comparing Blackberry’s 8 years to Apple’s 2 is a bit misleading. But John is known for his hyperbole and it should be a given that it is occurring.
But I do see the iPod Touch as being in the same category. I highly doubt the iPhone is being used for the same thing as the Blackberry by a large portion of it’s users.
Posted by Robert Elliott at March 17th, 2009 at 8:24 pmHold on a minute. Does the 50 million served by RIM include those pager like devices that aren’t even made anymore? And what good does making a barrage of incompatible platforms do for RIM?
The advantage of the iPhone & iPOD Touch is one platform one set of code. Not so in the RIM’s world.
I’d bet you couldn’t watch a decent thumbnail sized video on a BB Pearl.
I mean we’re talking yesterday’s news, RIM, versus the future, Apple.
Posted by Luis Diaz at March 17th, 2009 at 10:11 pmWell, these numbers mean more in terms of the software that was discussed yesterday. This is a large installed base of application buyers and Apple did some significant things to open the door for new types of applications and innovations that will sell lots more software through the iTunes Store, in turn driving more hardware sales.
Posted by Mel Krewall at March 18th, 2009 at 5:33 amIt seems unlikely that Apple considers RIM its main competition, in that the vast majority of RIM sales are to businesses, most of which are locked down by the IT department and don’t generate any post-purchase software sales.
Half a million “NO” votes on the “Layout Vote” Facebook app. vs. 30, 000 yes. Wonder if the devs will listen?
Richie
Posted by asd asd at March 18th, 2009 at 10:00 pmMake Money Online
apple took its knocks in the pc wars and lost to windows (% marketshare and $$$ revenue)
so if they come back and start to dominate the portable computing market (i don’t call them ‘phones’) then hey, hats off to steve jobs and the crew
if rim wants to compete then it needs to innovate and get away from milking its old platform
Posted by Sam Harrison at March 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pmI am logged in and making this comment from my iPhone and yes I did buy into the hype.
This story reminds me of the days of the compaq ipaq, handspring and palm pda’s. The PDAs all having touch screen, mp3, Internet, full color screens with streaming video and wifi support.
Rim merely had a crappy monochrome device with a scroll wheel and a physical qwerty keyboard. It was always so behind the times yet it came out on top.
I think apple is doing amazing – no debate there – but in a lot of ways I think they just created a new playground for rim to participate in and profit off.
Rim is almost complete building their palm pre killer – has a low end non 3g curve positioned at ~20 to ~40 dollar premium to a standard wireless contract.
I’m personally shorting apple right now and buying rim. The #s are just too compelling. iPhone user comment signing off!
Posted by Matt Stark at March 19th, 2009 at 9:19 pm