"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it.
Every unit they produce has a serial number so they don't have to ship it and then get it back as an afterthought. The wording is just mixed up because he's trying to say two things in the same sentence - they have produced 1 billion iPhones and they kept the 1 billionth unit and they have also received orders totalling over 1 billion orders.
"34,000 handsets every hour, 24 hours a day, every day of the quarter."
How the hell are they making them that fast?
Their suppliers have as many as 500,000 employees and it's not that they necessarily assemble full iPhones in an hour. A single iPhone could take 8 hours to put together but if they have 500,000 people working for 8 hours, they can put together that many.
At least we know they haven't hit a supply chain limit yet.
It's possible they've even outsold Samsung in unit volume. Samsung is projecting 34% profit drop and they sell between 60-85 million units in a quarter. They report their earnings for the last quarter tomorrow but they call it Q4 2014, which matches to Apple's Q1 2015. Last year, Apple's Q1 2014 was 51m iPhones and Samsung's Q4 2013 was 82m. Apple is now at 74m and Samsung is projecting a huge profit drop but not entirely due to smartphones.
For Apple to ship more units than (or even just coming close to) Samsung at a higher price point shows that the subsidies help counter the product being more expensive. Apple must be getting close to the full handset prices from carriers to make $74.6b who then sell the devices on contracts and recoup that plus additional profit over the contract period. iPads and Macs aren't subsidised by carriers so they don't benefit from this.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
One easy solution is they shipped it to an Apple Store and corporate Apple just bought it back.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
Shipped doesn't mean sold. They could have pre-empted the paying customer in the queue and written it out as an internal engineering or PR sample unit.
Of course, they can't record any revenue from the transaction but it's still the billionth iOS device shipped, even if it ends up on Phil Schiller's desk instead of some consumer's doorstop in Guangzhou, Paris, or El Paso.
Remember, Apple has oversight into their supply chain. They can say that the billionth device checked into Apple inventory (from their manufacturing partners) is automatically a house sample. It's not like Apple assigns a specific MAC address to a consumer upon online ordering. You get what they send to you (the model with the right specifications matching your order), not a specific device. It could have been built five weeks ago or five days ago.
Comments
Would seem so
/s
Impossible! Larger screen phones are unusable!
/s
That is your opinion I beg to differ with you.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
Every unit they produce has a serial number so they don't have to ship it and then get it back as an afterthought. The wording is just mixed up because he's trying to say two things in the same sentence - they have produced 1 billion iPhones and they kept the 1 billionth unit and they have also received orders totalling over 1 billion orders.
Their suppliers have as many as 500,000 employees and it's not that they necessarily assemble full iPhones in an hour. A single iPhone could take 8 hours to put together but if they have 500,000 people working for 8 hours, they can put together that many.
At least we know they haven't hit a supply chain limit yet.
It's possible they've even outsold Samsung in unit volume. Samsung is projecting 34% profit drop and they sell between 60-85 million units in a quarter. They report their earnings for the last quarter tomorrow but they call it Q4 2014, which matches to Apple's Q1 2015. Last year, Apple's Q1 2014 was 51m iPhones and Samsung's Q4 2013 was 82m. Apple is now at 74m and Samsung is projecting a huge profit drop but not entirely due to smartphones.
For Apple to ship more units than (or even just coming close to) Samsung at a higher price point shows that the subsidies help counter the product being more expensive. Apple must be getting close to the full handset prices from carriers to make $74.6b who then sell the devices on contracts and recoup that plus additional profit over the contract period. iPads and Macs aren't subsidised by carriers so they don't benefit from this.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
One easy solution is they shipped it to an Apple Store and corporate Apple just bought it back.
"On Nov. 22, we shipped our one billionth iOS device," Cook said. "It was a space-gray 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple."
Exactly how did they save it at Apple if they shipped it? And possibly sold it? Something is fishy here. If I was contacted by Apple about having purchased the billionth device I would probably hold out for a lot of money -- perhaps auction it. Of course Apple could have been sly about it and told the customer only that there was some sort of issue with it and offered an upgraded replacement which the person could have jumped on.
Shipped doesn't mean sold. They could have pre-empted the paying customer in the queue and written it out as an internal engineering or PR sample unit.
Of course, they can't record any revenue from the transaction but it's still the billionth iOS device shipped, even if it ends up on Phil Schiller's desk instead of some consumer's doorstop in Guangzhou, Paris, or El Paso.
Remember, Apple has oversight into their supply chain. They can say that the billionth device checked into Apple inventory (from their manufacturing partners) is automatically a house sample. It's not like Apple assigns a specific MAC address to a consumer upon online ordering. You get what they send to you (the model with the right specifications matching your order), not a specific device. It could have been built five weeks ago or five days ago.