With the iPhone 5 having experienced a massive unveiling on the 12th of September, there are doubts as to just how big iPhone’s share is in the market. The revelations are shocking to say the least. Putting all the numbers together we find that Apple’s iPhone alone is eligible to be a Fortune 50 company. In fact Apple’s coveted phone is alone bigger than all of Microsoft, not just Microsoft’s office or Windows.
Apple’s iPhone has generated more revenue than Microsoft over the last four quarters. Microsoft left with no option but to enter the smartphone race against Apple and Google, hasn’t made a sizeable impact as yet. There are doubts as to what would have been the case had Microsoft taken this decision to enter five years ago. Since there is no point in pondering over that possibility, we should instead look at how the iPhone has become the most crucial product to Apple’s business expansion.
Looking at the revenue that the iPhone generates for Apple Inc. we see that the iPhone generates revenue greater than the company’s revenue generated through macintosh, the iPad, the iPod, iTunes and not to mention the 30% cut it gets through the app store. In fact, in the first six months of this year, the iPhone generated 50% of the revenue of Apple. Things weren’t always this easy. There was a time when the iPhone only contributed to 1% of Apple’s revenue. However, the iPhone has only seen growth since then. For a majority of Apple’s 36 year existence, the Macintosh has been its major revenue generating product. In fact the iPod was a mere catalyst which convinced people to switch to Mac. The iPhone was never such a product.
In fact the first three months after the release of the 4S, the sales numbers (of the iPhone) crossed the number of iPods ever sold till date. The same quarter the iPhone outsold the Mac by a factor of seven. Apple also did not allow third party apps on its iOS platform initially. This year alone iTunes app store is estimated to generate $4.5 billion as revenue for developers, of which Apple will gain a 30% share. So the whole concept of opening up the OS has clearly worked in the company’s favour. The OS opened up in 2008 and since then there have been 30 billion app downloads on the iOS platform. Apple is clearly the leader when it comes to smartphones, but how it performs in the future remains to be seen.
