Apple Sells 10 Million iPhones in 3 Days, New Record [Chart]

When the number of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units sold finally broke 9 million over the launch weekend this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook had to breath a sigh of relief. Maybe. He might have been as cool as a cucumber. The point? This year’s new record of 10 million was about 11 percent higher than last year’s previous record of 9 million iPhone 5s and 5c units sold.

Which is a decent increase, of course.

“Sales for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus exceeded our expectations for the launch weekend, and we couldn’t be happier,” noted Cook earlier this week. “We would like to thank all of our customers for making this our best launch ever, shattering all previous sell-through records by a large margin. While our team managed the manufacturing ramp better than ever before, we could have sold many more iPhones with greater supply and we are working hard to fill orders as quickly as possible.”

The graph, of course, shows the number of new iPhones sold in the first 3 days of sales, which Apple started tracking (and sharing) in 2008. In 2007, when the first iPhone was introduced, it took 74 days to sell the 1 millionth iPhone — which was no small feat back then. Heck, most smartphone manufacturers today would be pleased with selling a million units in a launch weekend.

In any event, these numbers are interesting, but that’s all they are, interesting. Are they definitive of any specific trends? Sort of, in a broad strokes way. Why? Apple’s launch weekends have included a wide variety of carriers and countries in which Apple was rolling out new iPhones to. It would require a more serious effort than I’m willing to spend time on to figure out how much of an impact a particular country or carrier may have had on launch weekend.

The point is, Apple is still kicking ass and taking names with its smartphone sales. In fact, manufacturing and shipping millions of phones . . . and getting them to arrive at a customer’s door on launch day . . . is an astounding achievement. Now that’s a graph I’d like to see — the flight path of 10 million iPhones over three days . . . or a heat map of their distribution. . . .

Still quite pleased with my iPhone 6, by the way . . . which I’ve managed not to bend so far.

About the author

Chris Maxcer

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I've been writing about the tech industry since the birth of the email newsletter, and I still remember the clacking Mac keyboards from high school -- Apple's seed-planting strategy at work. I'm a big fan of elegant gear and great tech, but there's something to be said for turning it all off -- or most of it -- to go outside. Online I like to call out cool stuff on Wicked Cool Bite and blog with my buddies at Man Makes Fire. To catch me, take a "firstnamelastname" guess at the url of this site.