Apple shipped 1,591,092,250 computers in its first 40 years, more than any computer company

Mac Daily News ^ | April 1, 2016 | Horace Dediu

[Swordmaker]

“In Apple’s first 40 years it shipped 1,591,092,250 computers,” Horace Dediu writes for Asymco. “This shipment total is higher than any other computer company in its first 40 years. Actually there are no other PC makers that are 40 years old. One computer maker (IBM) is older but they only sold PCs for 24 years and what they still sell they don’t sell in high numbers.”

Dediu writes, “Combining the history of customer creation and customer preservation with the value obtained from each customer implies that the next 40 years will be about creating another large tranche of customers whose willingness to spend on whatever Apple creates will be relatively unchanged.”

“We don’t know the limit,” Dediu writes. “One billion was hard to imagine even one year ago. We might see two billion devices in short order. Perhaps not. Perhaps as we have a multitude of devices about us all day the number will become less meaningful. But if the number of middle class customers grows and as Apple keeps its products within their reach, there is no reason to think that there will be a reversal of the last 40 years in terms of customer acquisition.”

Tons more in the full article – highly recommended – here.

[ReignOfError]

Tablets has been around long before the iPad.

And nobody bought them. Which part of "market-creating" was unclear?

The iPhone was the last true innovation and that was a heck of a lot longer than 5 years.

If your argument is that Apple is domed because it hasn't had a market-creating innovation, the kind that 99.99% of companies never have in their entire history, in NINE years, that doesn't make the argument a lot stronger.

I have consistent in noting that all Apple does it take stuff and clean it up some.

If you're going to be that reductionist about it, that's all Thomas Edison or Henry Ford did. Apple isn't competing against some imaginary company that has introduced antigravity, faster-than-light travel, cold fusion, and cures for all known disease in the last few years. It's competing against other companies that are also just "cleaning it up some."

So tell me, what earth-shattering breakthrough have other companies had that Apple should have? A display that wraps around the edge of the phone? Waterproofing? MicroSD slots?