Last year, despite the constant cries from naysayers that Cupertino had lost its edge, Apple blew past all expectations by shipping over 259.5 million iOS devices.
So how many iOS devices will Apple ship in 2015? According to one reputable industry analyst, a staggering 320 million iOS devices.
Over at Asymco, industry analyst Horace Dediu lays out his rationale in a series of charts.
It basically breaks down to this. In the past, the number of devices Apple sells has tied in very closely to its capital spending pattern.
In 2014, Apple’s planning on spending a lot of money — $12 billion — on capital spending. This would include money spent on making new devices, building factories, releasing the Apple Watch, finishing the Spaceship Campus, and so on.
If the correlation between Apple’s capital spending and iOS devices sold in a year holds to pattern, that means they are on track to sell 310 to 320 million iOS devices this year.
We’ll see if that holds true. As Dediu notes, the capital spending budget might be thrown out of whack this year by things like constructing the Spaceship Campus, which won’t directly translate into iOS device sales.
One thing’s for sure. No matter how you cut it, we’re in for a big year.
Update: This post has been corrected to reflect predictions for 2015, not 2016.
Source: Asymco
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
5 responses to “Apple could sell 320 million iOS devices in 2015”
An equally interesting statistic (to app developers) is – how many of those 320 million are new to iOS?
An interesting point about new to iOS users. There are two paths for someone to enter the iOS ecosystem:
1 – A person newly enters the iOS ecosystem through a first purchase of a NEW iOS device.
2 – A person newly enters the iOS ecosystem through a first purchase or receiving a gift of a USED iOS device.
New or used, a new customer is a new customer..
There may be an observable correlation, but what’s the causality?
It will be wonderful to see the iPhone reverse Android’s growth trend. Supposedly it was going to be Windows Phone that was going to do that, but Windows Phone seems to be struggling to increase market share even at the low end. Apparently, almost no one is wanting a third mobile platform. I had been hoping Windows Phone was going to take a chunk of market share out of Android’s unstoppable growth with low- and mid-range devices but no such luck. The thing is with Apple taking nearly all the profits from the smartphone market is it even worth Microsoft’s effort in the mobile market. Fighting for 7% of the mobile profits has to be a waste of effort for everyone else except Apple at this point.
It’s almost inconceivable for Android to dominate with 80% market share and for Android manufacturers to get back almost nothing in return. What is the matter with Wall Street? Can’t they see at this point it’s a lose-lose situation for everyone in mobile but Apple? Android’s growth has hit a wall so it’s likely to stagnate or even worse, decline. Neither option will likely produce profits. If older iPhones continue to stay on the market, they’ll filter down to consumers who don’t have a lot of money and it saves Apple the cost of creating a line of less costlier devices. Consumers are basically getting a high-end, high-quality iPhone that’s just a year or two old.
How long can Wall Street continue to bet on Android as the platform that’s going to put Apple out of business? i think it’s a fool’s gamble. The iPhone is no closer to becoming a commodity than it was a year ago and despite all the naysayer’s FUD the value of an iPhone is continuing to rise. That’s absolutely amazing. Once Apple Pay becomes popular and if Apple were to offer some really low-cost content for iOS users, iPhone sales would certainly continue to slowly rise while sucking up major profits. It’s a great opportunity for Apple to drop the hammer on Google.
Hey guys, I guess you have a mistake in the article: you’re saying Apple is planning on spending $12 billion IN 2014 – shouldn’t that be 2015?