Four years ago Apple hit the milestone of selling more iPhones per day than babies born per day. Now, four years later, we wanted to revisit those statistics since iPhone sales have grown quite significantly since then. It turns out, with current sales numbers, Apple sells nearly two iPhones for every baby born.
The math works out like this: Apple sold a record total of 231.4 million iPhones in 2015. Divide that number by 365 days in a year to get 633,963 iPhones sold every single day. The UN estimates that there are 360,000 babies born every day across the world. So technically, that comes out to 1.76 iPhones for every one baby.
It doesn’t end there though. In using the amount of iPhones sold in an entire year, I wanted to paint the broadest picture possible for iPhone sales since they naturally rise and fall depending on the quarter. If we take the numbers from just last quarter instead, Apple actually sells more than two iPhones per baby.
Apple sold 74.8 million iPhones in Q1 2016. The average quarter is about 91 days, which means last quarter Apple moved an astounding 821,978 iPhone units every day. (Seriously, take a moment to let that soak in — almost one million iPhones every day.) Going back to the roughly 360,000 daily births, more than two iPhones were sold for every baby born last quarter: 2.28 iPhones per baby, to be exact.
With these numbers put into perspective, it’s hard to deny how incredible Apple’s iPhone sales are, even if growth is beginning to stall. It’s also mildly entertaining to imagine every baby you come across holding an iPhone in either hand.
