In a fit of editorial sobriety, reader Noel just sent us this handy "1 million devices sold" graphic above. The image demonstrates the speed (in terms of days) at which each competing handset achieved the magic milestone. What it leaves out is the footprint at launch which of course, affects the total population able to purchase the device. For example, the iPhone 3G launched in 21 countries simultaneously whereas the G1 launched in the US only. It's also worth noting that the precision reflects that of the announcements made. For example, VZW announced that the Storm hit 1M "through January" which could be interpreted as January 31st or January 27th, the day of the announcement -- and that's just US sales. Still, the table is a valuable tool for the fanboy braggarts and budding marketeers amongst you. Data after the break.
[Thanks, Noel F.]
posted Jan 29th 2009 6:45AM
Look at that, the G1 outsold the iPhone.
(Don't say "Noz it didnts, lookie 3 days!", look at the original iPhone because the G1 is the first android)
FLAME ON APPLE FANBOIS!
Hey, you're right. It did. Good on them.
Flame off now?
Flame off until iEye sees this. :)
Just FYI the iPhone 3G need 4 days to be sold 1Million times! the G1 needed LONGER!!! its just a racem how many days it needed to be sold 1Million time....
pay attention in math class next time!
iEye is a real person? I thought it was a Mac SE with some sort of primitive AI system.
If he's AI, I'm gonna commit suicide before they invade.
As an iPhone owner, I can honestly say there was plenty I liked about the G1 - namely the smooth scrolling and the keyboard. There was also plenty I liked about the storm - feature wise - but as a phone I thought it was terrible.
The G1 was priced drastically lower than the original iPhone. Come on, $179.99 versus $600.00. Not even a contest. The original iPhone was also 2G and Apple still sold a ton.
On the other hand, the iPhone 3G was in more markets, had 3G obviously and priced pretty low AND had the promise of the app store. In other words, nothing in this chart really surprises me.
@iEye
leaching:
To be dissolved or passed out by a percolating liquid.
n.
1. The act or process of leaching.
2. A porous, perforated, or sievelike vessel that holds material to be leached.
3. The substance through which a liquid is leached.
4. Also my name.
leeching:
v. to cling to and feed upon or drain, as a leech: His relatives leeched him until his entire fortune was exhausted.
Grammar is key, if it wasn't for the iPod, it would have taken over a year for the iPhone to hit 1 million because everyone besides the fanboys would still be under the impression that Apple is evil... or if it wasn't for the iPod, Apple would still be making computers inside of 'bubble'd' monitors....
Somebody needs to take their Zunex.
{cue folksy music and a soothing baritone male voice}
"Apple Hater Derangement Syndrome is a contagious disease that affects 20 million Windows users. Once you contract it, you have it for life. There is no cure, but there is Zunex."
{cue beautiful redhead in a park, seated on a bicycle}
"When I first found out I hated iPods, I thought my life was over, but then my doctor prescribed Zunex and since then, I see beauty in every Windows product I see, even when they blue screen! Thanks, Zunex. "
{redhead rides off into the sunset}
"Zunex is a once a day pill which works by helping you to rationalize your unbridled hate for everything Apple. Ask your doctor for it. Side effects include sweating, shouting, chair throwing, lost of voice and possible hallucinations and feelings of persecution from gadget sites. Call your doctor if these symptoms persist."
Wow this is sad. You made the same grammar error twice, while you were corrected and given a definition.
@Matt
You say grammar is key, but you fail by saying "if it wasn't.." when it should be "if it weren't...".
Hello pot, I'd like you to meet kettle.
Holy shite!! No wonder the Apple Stores were "packed" for three days.
Wow! The BlackBerry Storm beat the hell out of million unit sales over the original iPhone. However, all these companies have a wee bit of a way to go to beat the 3G iPhone. Of course, they never will because they don't really have any handsets that are equal to the iPhone. The Pre would have come close by using Apple's IP, but that's finished now.
I don't actually have any of these phones right now...
but my opinion is if the G1 launched on a network like Verizon or had a real established smart phone customer base and a fully rolled out 3G network like AT&T, it easily would have hit 1 million in half that time, maybe even faster. But they got the deal with T-mobile, it is what it is, and nobody at HTC or T-mobile is complaining i'm sure.
The Storm numbers make sense to me because it is such a major change for Blackberry users who like Blackberry for the physical keyboard. But even then, this graph only shows US sales for the Storm so obviously it hit a million much quicker...
As far as the iPhone 3G goes... hey, good for Apple... an EXTREMELY well planned, and truly GLOBAL launch, mixed with incredible amounts of hype and marketing... this is why they are king right now. Don't hate the player, hate the game. lol (I say that even tho I don't like the player haha)
So yeah, like someone else said, nothing in this graph surprises me. Actually, one this does, i thought the original iPhone hitt a million faster... either way, thanks for the graph Noel, it was interesting.
Sold to consumers or sold to shelves on the shops?
Sold or shipped to shops?
I think it's a bit unsurprising that the original iPhone is last and that the 3G is first. They released an internet-centric phone on a 3G network that didn't have 3G. The camera was weak for the price, no video recording, no GPS. It really was a crap on the consumer.
The 3G version (and software fixes) fixed a lot of those problems and around that time it had become very fashionable to sport one.
The iPhone certainly wasn't the first to do what they did (though it is funny to watch people claim that they were,) but they did it in a very fashionable and trendy sorta way.
I love this graph.
The only one where iPhone appears to lose at first glance :D
Yep. And then you factor in the original MSRP on the Iphone at launch and you realize that they made more money than everyone else.....
No, then you look at the X axis and realise a lower score is better...
...duh
Well I guess its time to put cut and paste on the IPHONE. (its not selling)
The iPhone EDGE did take a while to leave the US. I think it was released in the UK (and probably the rest of Europe) in October - 4 months after it was released in the US.
That's the more likely explanation for the numbers.
ever heard of statistical manipulation....if you factor in a cost variable into the equation then the iphone will definitively come out on top because the 1g iphone had an absurd upfront cost compared to the cheaper 3g iphone..
So what we're saying is that a popular touchscreen phone that hasn't just halved its price will take approximately 2 months to sell a million units. The differences between the different phones on the chart doesn't seem that dramatic.
Hope to see more phones added to this chart - bring on the PRE!
Is the iPhone even a smartphone?
Serious question here, folks...
Yes it is. It offers PDA-like features beyond what you would expect from a basic phone, eventhough it lacks features like MMS.
The iPhone is indubitably a smartphone. However, it's a smartphone with many dumbusers.
What a stupid question. Though it lacks certain features, it certainly does a lot of "smart" like things, well more than a typical regular phone could do, so why wouldn't it be a smartphone?
WixosTrix; a true smartphone multi-tasks. My N95 isn't the best there it is, but it happily plays back mp3s whilst I write SMS's and use the calculator etc.
@: Samboini
So does the iPhone. In fact if you pop the hood, you will be able to access it by terminal and do a "top" command to see all running processes etc. Its based on Mac OS X which is based on BSD (Unix-like).
For a short while i even ran PHP/Apache/SQLite on mine. Ok, it was an iPod, but its the same OS and core.
No, the iPhone/iTouch does not do multitask. You must completely shutdown you application in order to open another one.
when a iphone first came out it was dubbed a iphone before apple got told off for calling it that when it wasnt a iphone. ( i think smart phone needs to have thrid party apps or some random reason) I think once this was resolved its now is a smartphone
I have an iPhone 3G, and I think of it as a "dumbphone." You could argue that it's a very advanced feature phone. But it lacks enough basic features that have been in smartphones for years to say that it has all the features of a smartphone.
E.g., it has no user accessible file system. You can't email attachments. You can email one photo at a time. In order to email more than one, you need to install a special, dumb application to attach more than one photo in an email. That's pretty dumb. Hence, the iPhone is a dumbphone. People like it because it's easy to use. That also makes it a dumbphone.
Don't get me wrong, I like my iPhone a lot. But you have to put up with some dumb stuff to use it.
Hence: dumbphone.
@SewerShark: strictly speaking, the iPhone DOES multitask (iPod playing in the background, Mail automatically pulling e-mail, etc.), but restricted by Apple's rules.
I don't know whats the big deal about Palm Pre "multitasking". I have a Sony Ericsson P1i which does multitasking as well. I have chat application, music player and opera browser (with several other small apps like calculator, calendar, etc) running at the same time and functioning. For instance, while listening to music (or even FM radio) I browse the internet and can switch to chat application (Fring or Ebuddy) while a web page is loading. Is this what we call "multitasking"?
I think what Palm means is a "multiapp-view" where you can glance at several apps running at the same time and switch to whichever you like. This is unlike the iphone or the P1i where we have to switch to a home screen (iphone) or the task manager (P1i) to switch between applications. I am sure you have to do such a thing in Pre as well.
It cannot multitask. The applications must be approved by the vendor before you can install them. You can ONLY install them from the vendors site.
Take Symbian s40. It was a proprietary operating system that could install third party programs IF approved by the vendor, and it could not multitask. Not a smartphone
@SewerShark
WTF is an iTouch? You touch? They touch?
iPod Touch
We want pre!! :)
Handy my ass!!! A totally misleading chart that takes 1 million phones sold out of context. But if it puts a grin on Engadget's face, that is all they care about. Bring on the chart of the US only huh??? Then that would be a far comparison.
Hence the context below the data:
"US-Only, does not include global sales data."
The context below the chart reads "*US only, does not include global sales data." See that little thing right infront of the "US"? That's called an asterisk. See the OTHER asterisk right after the heading "BlackBerry Storm"? This chart reports data for the US only for none other than the Blackberry Storm. It only applies to that. Nothing else. All the others report global sales. Which is why this graph is stupid and misleading.
@Joe +1 for reading comprehension. You may leave class early today. The rest of you open your books and study.
Now read the bit in the article about how the G1 was a US only launch.
Well... the 3G came out worldwide. So the market was about 10 times bigger for the 3G...
Get a better statistic, boys.
Send that graphic to Steve "The iPhone will never get any traction" Ballmer!
Where's the HTCTouch, Diamond, Nokia N95 family and others on this list? The Touch & Diamond have sold well more than 3M units each while the N95 has sold more than 2M in the UK alone.
Neither HTC nor Nokia used to brag about sales numbers all that much until recently. Afaik the 5800XM was the first Nokia device where they stated the number of sales in another way than as casual afterthought buried somewhere in their quaterly result statements).
Hence, hard to track. Overall, the N95 alone sold more than 20M times afaik, though...
This graph is fundamentally flawed... it's comparing apples to oranges and as such should not even exist. The whole point of a comparison is to make it such that you are leveling the playing field and making them, well... comparable. But as it stands:
iphone 3G: 21 countries
Nokia 5800: around 5
G1: 1
Storm: 10 (and thereafter very staggered)
iphone: 25 (inital wave)
enough said.
Wasn't the iPhone 3G sold to more countries than the original iPhone...? :P
Why single out that?
How about OS/X, Windows, Android?
How about hard-qwerty, soft-qwerty?
How about black, red, white?
Seems like a fine chart to this viewer...
It's printed in big red. It read: U.S-only, does not include global sales data.
It's printed in big red. It read: U.S-only, does not include global sales data. (2nd attempt for the reply to go to the right post, by neon_tiger )
Errr G1 was sold in the UK as well as the US you know...
Err...25 countries? The original iPhone was available in 6 countries.
Dude: clean out the carb occasionally. Maybe it'll cut down on randomly throwing out numbers that aren't pulled from your ass.
And not only that... If I remember correctly, the G1 was only available in "3G Markets" for the majority of that time, up until just recently. So that's definitely saying something.
Seriously. This irks me, after Engadget did a really great, objective job on their Patent story (iphone vs. pre), they follow it up with this piece of junk data? Junk data in, junk data out. This chart literally tells us nothing.
you do see the bold red type that says US only, right?
The Blackberry Storm data is inaccurate - the 1 million sold figure was released by Verizon Wireless, which means that it only represents devices sold in the U.S. market and not Europe on Vodafone. So this really is an apples to apples comparison between the G1, Storm and Iphone (non 3G) as all three numbers represent U.S. only sales of a first-gen device.
I'd be curious what the total sales figures for the Storm were globally. Also when considering U.S. sales you have to factor in the network on which a device is sold, at first glance the G1's performance seems even more impressive because of the smaller subscriber base and network on which it was released, but the difference in smartphone lineups could also have played a factor.
Actually, I was replying to neon_tiger but the reply went to the post below it- figured it'd be better not to double post
I love the iPhone and all, but really, since when has a graph containing old and easily accessible information considered news?
wow,its official. the electronic consumer masses have spoken, n cast their vote. they chose to trust apple quality/innovation/reputation. indeed this is technological history we are witnessing, we should all feel lucky. when an imperfect cell came out,with no mms,video cam etc, but yet the imperfect one or underdog was awarded the coveted title. iphone went from being a verizon reject,att nourished n brought it to become the ultimate gladiator story;from slave to king. i was wrong,i said $600 cell will tank here in the usa on a 2 year contract.i also thought jobs was full of bs,when he said "it will revolutionize".i ate my words. ok bring on the hate mail iphone haters.........i have silenced all.,
N95 is the most sold smartphone in the world by a friggin' huge margin.. oh and iPhone is not a smartphone because it doesn't have multitasking. If you'd include Nokia dumbphones on that chart you'd have a winrar..
Actually, the iPhone can in fact multitask. You can listen to music while doing anything else you want, and don't say it doesn't count as multitasking. These figures look good to your apple fan, then the smart people look and realise, the only phone there with the same sort of release as the iPhone was the Nokia 5800. Another thing to note is, the 5800 did well, without all the hype.
Has no multitasking? It does!
It is just not available to other developers.
"you'd have a winrar."
I prefer 7-zip
Did you actually read the article? Go back and try again--has nothing to do with total sales rather is identifying how long it took to sell 1 million units. I'm sure the N95 has highest total sales but considering it's been out the longest and is most widely available, this isn't really a surprise, is it?
Indeed, on my n95 I often have Google mail, mobbler, web browser and fring open in the background, plus whatever other apps that I am using at the time. I think that the iphone is more powerful performance wise, so technically it should have no problems running multiple applications. Thickie question, but did apple intend to have user installable apps when they launched it? This could explain why the iphone won't do it, maybe they were afraid of people jailbreaking to install apps?
Its funny because iphone 3g sold 1 million the first weekend, then in the next months its sold only 2 million more (around), or you could say:
iphone 3g 3 million unit sold x 6 months = 0.5 million x month.
Blackberry storm sold around 0.5 million x month (the first month)
Nokia 5800 TOO sold too 0.5 million x month (5800 has sold 1 million and was launched 2 months ago)
So do you get the pattern?.
IMHO the amount of unit sold ALSO depend in how quick you can product this amount of units and how quick you can put on the shelves, 0.5 million x month sound a magic number.
BUT, the trouble with Apple is Iphone 3g (and iphone 2g ) are the only products they sold, Blackberry and Nokia sold over 10 different kind of cellphone.
It's not the Apple fanboy syndrome that sold the iPhone 3G it's the fact that the device was offered at an affordable $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model with 3G included. A very different picture in terms of the original iPhone which was $499+ and no 3G, as well as the expensive plans that AT&T was selling with it. But as of now, the original iPhone is a very valuable phone and pretty much sought out because of it's unlocking capabilities which the 3G seems to struggle against.
Graphic and comparison are somewhat irrelevant if not put in relation to the size of the markets that was addressed during that period.
This is pointed by the author of the post... who says iphone is for 21 countries.. when G1 is only for US.
Why not put a graphic that shows either :
- same graphic but indicating the total size of the markets in which it was launched
- or a graphic with a penetration speed... with curves :) (iphone 3G reached 0.1% market share where distributed in xx days, etc)
Or else that all seems so partial (agaaaaain).
1 million sold for the Storm eh? How about a graph to show how many were returned back.
Popularity doesn't mean quality.
That's true! Remember that pretty cheerleader in high school? 10 years later she's working at the grocery store in the same town you grew up in, with four kids and a smoking habit she can't quit.
Maybe that was just my high school reunion experience.
The iPhone is definitely the cheerleader of the cellphone world. Yeah, it's pretty, and it's easy, and shallow people are jealous when you have one. And all the popular kids have one. But it lacks the kind of substance to make it worth it in the long run.
who cares how much it sold in a weekend? i'd think how much it sold overall is much more important if you want to make a comparison of market penetration.
the iphone a smartphone? i don't think so multitasking or not. at least in europe there are 1000 E or N series Nokia smartphones and 500 winmobiles for every iphone 1st gen or 3g. maybe because the iphone is just an ipod that (maybe if you are lucky) you can make calls with and you have to void the guarantee to make it work semi-properly, or maybe it's because of the crappy cam, no mms, no videocalls, pathetic text input and no bluetooth transfer.
whatever the reason the iphone is just an american hipster blogger's sweetheart, in the real world i'd say that nokia is by far the single top player in smartphones with a bunch of others that compete with WinMo offers for the rest.
"whatever the reason the iphone is just an american hipster blogger's sweetheart"
So true. Many of my iPhone 3G owning friends are getting frustrated with the limitations now that they've had it for a while. One jailbroke his and now considers it an "almost smartphone". He was giddy as a school girl about his copy/paste workaround apps. :)
Yeah, a friend of mine (works in marketing) got hers, and she had it for about 6 months. She has recently come to totally hate her phone, and is frustrated with how much she can't do with it. It is particularly entertaining to see the change, since she was SO excited by everything it could do. Ignorance is bliss!
She did upgrade from a Razr though - to which the iPhone was a significant improvement. I think a lot of iPhone users are in that boat.
@: SewerShark
That is not true. You can listen to music while using any application. Unless the application forces sound.
This graph should be based on sales for 1 country at launch. The G1 was initially launched to only people in the US living in T-Mobile's 3G areas which are very far and few between. There are many states that don't have any 3G coverage anywhere yet they were still able to sell that many devices that fast. The iPhone was available at every Apple and AT&T store across the US and in stores in many other countries.
The other statistic that isn't figured in is how well they handled the demand. Apple knew that there would be a huge demand for the iPhone so they made sure that there were that many on the shelf to begin with. There were originally only supposed to be 800,000 G1's made in the first 3 months that it went to market. When it got popular they upped it to a million. I ordered the phone 2 weeks after it came out and it was on back order for a month.
Lamest chart ever. It's so flawed it doesn't even mean anything. What's the point? That you can draw a chart with incomparable numbers to make a certain device look like a winner? Way to go!!
wow,its official. the electronic consumer masses have spoken, n cast their vote. they chose to trust apple quality/innovation/reputation. indeed this is technological history we are witnessing, we should all feel lucky. when an imperfect cell came out,with no mms,video cam etc, but yet the imperfect one or underdog was awarded the coveted title. iphone went from being a verizon reject,att nourished n brought it to become the ultimate gladiator story;from slave to king. i was wrong,i said $600 cell will tank here in the usa on a 2 year contract.i also thought jobs was full of bs,when he said "it will revolutionize".i ate my words. ok bring on the hate mail iphone haters.........i have silenced all.,
Where is she getting these numbers? I can't find any proof there have been a million G1's sold. I can find proof that HTC has said they EXPECT to sell a million...but why the hell would they say otherwise. I can make a crap graph too, but without the figures and proof to back it up, it's meaningless.
This clearly shows why you have to roll out your product, worldwide.
Still no numbers for the Instinct, huh? Welp, see ya later!
Right back at ya Blackberry.
G1 beat you on software quality, price and speed to 1 million units.
Thanks for playing, you won't be getting a consolation prize on your way out to the refurbished department.
this is for the guy who said that u CANNOT send MMS with the iphone.
There is a simple way to do that.
Take phone number 222-444-5555 and add @att.com or whatever carrier you are using and there u have it u can send MMS to the iphone.Simple
Which doesn't work in the UK. Or many other places.
yeah mate. maybe you go around blogs saying that apple stuff "just works". i don't know what this mumbo jumbo number is for, my phone just snaps a foto and forwards it like an sms. and actually i can snap a decent 5mp foto and send it through bluetooth. oh and i can videocall too. all without jailbreaking or installing 3d party apps. in my book that is what just works and you know what? you should demand that stuff from your 600$ phone instead of being proud that your phone sells better than others.
being brainwashed in company is not a smartphone feature.
hmmm did you guys read that chart well.. the apple fanboy haters.. it says it took tll these other phones months to hit 1 mil when it took the iphone 3 days.. the storm is garbage .. that stupid click screen.. i use it and its tedious... texting on that thing has to be the most i hate about it..
Iphone 3 g 30 countries vs storm's US only figures?
Its hardly comparable buddy :P
Don't be stupid. Read the chart again.
Nokia sells 18 phones per second everyday. Nokia FTW!
wow,its official. the electronic consumer masses have spoken, n cast their vote. they chose to trust apple quality/innovation/reputation. indeed this is technological history we are witnessing, we should all feel lucky. when an imperfect cell came out,with no mms,video cam etc, but yet the imperfect one or underdog was awarded the coveted title. iphone went from being a verizon reject,att nourished n brought it to become the ultimate gladiator story;from slave to king. i was wrong,i said $600 cell will tank here in the usa on a 2 year contract.i also thought jobs was full of bs,when he said "it will revolutionize".i ate my words. ok bring on the hate mail iphone haters.........i have silenced all.,
When did the G1 sell 1 million? Does any one have the source for it? I though it was only on track to sell 500k worldwide for 2008.
Good job if it did. With the small carrier, limited launch (3G markets only, UK, US only launch), limited advertising (almost non-existent compared to the Blackberry Storm & iPhone/iPhone 3g advertising, though it got a boost from free media coverage) 1 million isn't too bad if it's true.
The iPhone is not a smartphone. Well, it is, but it doesn't sell in that category. People who buy iPhones now are people who historically bought regular phones and iPods. They're not taking market share away from companies like RIM, who have the business smartphone market pretty much nailed down. They are taking market share away from companies like Motorola, who consistently put out shitty pseudo smartphones and music phones that only succeeded because they were the only things available.
I dont see how this can be right, the Nokia 5800 has not even launched here in the United States?
Hey...
I have about 2 phones (iPhone 3G & G1) on that list so hopefully I wont be seen as biased... but the data may not be as Kosher as it appears on first glance...
Most companies number their sales from when they have left the retail store... and in comparison Apple number their sales from when it leaves its warehouse and not retail stores... that's a big difference in accountancy... your comparing warehouse shipments to retail movements which is stupid... and for the iPhone 3G they did exactly that...
So until the graph above gives specific details at the point they started counting the number of units being shipped... its potentially flawed... so there is no need for arguing over the * for USA only.....
Android is going to take over the whole market.
The iphone sales are significantly slowing down.
CORRECTION: "What it leaves out is the footprint at launch which of course, affects the total population able to purchase the device. For example, the iPhone 3G launched in 21 countries simultaneously whereas the G1 launched in the US only."
The big red lettering on the graph reads "*US Only - Does not include global sales data"
So in fact, it does not leave out the footprint, but instead leaves out global sales so as to make all data sets common. While it would be interesting to see how much faster the 3G sold if you consider global sales figures, this graph does not contain that data as it doesn't hold a valid comparison to the other data on the graph.
OMG!! CAN YOU PPL READ?? The ”US sales only applies to the STORM not the others...sheesh
iPhone 3G's only at the top because the 1st iPhone gave it, its fame. Good old Nokia's still at the top :)