Apple Hits 3 Billion iPhones Sold — But Is the Future Still Secure?

Over the course of the past year, Apple has come under fire for a variety of reasons, including AI flaws and a strong dislike for the company's new design philosophy. However, the numbers do not lie, and if Apple knows anything, it is how to sell iPhones. Specifically, three billion of them, as announced by CEO Tim Cook during today's earnings call. That’s an impressive number on its own, but it’s even wilder when you consider that Apple is picking up the pace.

  

 The first iPhone was released in 2007, and in 2016, the company sold one billion of them. Getting to 2 billion took only five years; from there it’s been just four years to sell another billion.  It seems like a trend that will undoubtedly continue when one takes into consideration the rate at which young people, at least in this nation, prefer iPhones to Android. Related: Apple claims that Trump's tariffs are increasing its costs by $1 billion more. That’s also a lot of eggs in one basket.  Eddy Cue, an employee of Apple, recently acknowledged that "you may not need an iPhone in ten years." That should be pretty worrying if your biggest business is selling phones!  Apple’s most notable foray into a forward-looking form factor hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, either.  It has also made some famous mistakes when it tried to add useful AI features to its phones. 

 Apple does not appear to be particularly well prepared for the world that might exist ten years from now, at least from the outside. Cook clearly has the issue on his mind. Later in the earnings call when asked about the fate of phones as the dominant mobile platform, he mentioned that the company is “thinking about other things as well,” but thinks that emerging technologies “are likely to be complementary devices, not substitution.”  Phones certainly seem safe in the short term, but maybe whatever Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking up will slow Apple’s roll a bit on the way to its four billionth iPhone sale.