On Friday I told you that in the process between Apple and Samsung, Phill Schiller declared that Apple has a very simple method to predict how well a new version of the iPhone terminal will sell. Apple says it calculates things by thinking that each new iPhone sells as much as all previous models combined, and so far their estimates have proven to be true. If we look at the table above, we find that the iPhone 3G was sold in 4 times more copies than the iPhone 2G, the iPhone 3GS was sold in 1.6 times more copies than the first two models of the iPhone, the iPhone 4 recorded equally high sales as the first three versions of the iPhone, and the iPhone 4S for the time being has recorded sales that total half of the sales of the other 4 models combined.
- The 3G easily outsold the original iPhone. In fact, it sold nearly four times as many.
- The 3GS also handily beat the 3G+original total by a factor of 1.6
- The 4 also beat the 3GS+3G+original. As the 4 may continue to sell into the future, the beat will only grow larger.
- The 4S is only half way through beating the 4+4GS+3G+original. Assuming the current quarter sales roughly equal to the last quarter the total for 4S will reach two thirds of the sum of the previous generations (ie 100 million) by the end of September. Bearing in mind that the 4S is likely to remain in production at least one more year yields a potential to come close to the target of 162 million for all the previous generations put together.
For iPhone 5 it is estimated that the sales will be 2 times higher than all 5 previous models and in the graph above you have everything represented. Considering that the iPhone 4/4S will be kept on sale, it is estimated that the total number of units sold will increase accordingly, but the iPhone 5 would surpass them without problems. Those from Asymco estimate that Apple would sell around 200 million iPhone 5 terminals in 3 years of existence on the market and the figure is not difficult to reach, considering the popularity that the device now has on the market.
