The iPhone has been an incredible success for Apple. So much more of a success than we all predicted when it was unveiled back in 2007. It’s the hottest smartphone on the planet, and at five years old, it’s now bigger than Microsoft’s entire business put together. With $22.7 billion in sales last quarter, the smartphone outsold everything Apple’s biggest rival has to offer.
Let’s put that into perspective: One Apple product outsold everything Microsoft has to offer. It sold more than the Xbox, Microsoft Office, Windows Phone, and the Windows operating system itself — put together.
For the last quarter, which ended on March 31, Microsoft made $17.4 billion. That’s $5.3 billion less than Apple made on the iPhone.
As noted by Vanity Fair, “cool is what tech consumers want.” And Microsoft doesn’t offer that.
Cool is what tech consumers want. Exhibit A: today the iPhone brings in more revenue than the entirety of Microsoft.
No, really.
One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion.
What’s even more incredible with these stats is when you look at the positions Apple and Microsoft were in just ten years ago. Apple was hugely successful with the iPod, but even so, the company could only dream of turning over the kind of numbers Microsoft was seeing.
Even now, Macs still aren’t as widespread as Windows PCs. But thanks to devices like the iPhone and the iPad, Apple sees more revenue and profit than Google and Microsoft — two of the biggest companies in tech — combined.
Source: Vanity Fair
Via: Forbes
