by Felix Richter, Statista.com
Reports of the iPhone’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
That’s the main takeaway from Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) holiday quarter results, reported Tuesday afternoon. Having sold 78.3 million iPhones between October and December, Apple not only beat analysts’ expectations (the consensus estimate had been around 76 million) but also bested its own sales record by 3.5 million units.
The results clearly indicate that the iPhone 7 (and 7 Plus) weren’t received as the boring incremental upgrades many analysts had made them out to be. During the earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that the company saw particularly strong demand for the larger iPhone 7 Plus, the first iPhone to be equipped with two back-facing camera lenses for enhanced photography features.
Apple’s strong performance during the holiday quarter might even have helped the company snatch back the smartphone crown from Samsung (OTC:SSNLF), as Apple’s record quarter fell into a time when Samsung was dealing with the fallout of ‘batterygate’.
This chart shows Apple’s quarterly iPhone sales.
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