Replies to post #79256 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

40-45 million

Yeah, it does seem like a lot.

It seems consistent, though, with a couple of different methods I have run across for estimating production - one based on IMEI numbers and another based on something else that I do not remember right off hand.

I do not think it depends on the People's Republic, or on another model. I think, according to what I have read of production estimates, Apple is at the level of production it needs to hit 40 million phones by a year from now.

There were 20 some countries added today, with roughly another 30 to go before the end of the year. We may have to get used to thinking in big numbers.

[Tex]

re iPhone numbers

This seems like surprising number (to me), unless China is a lock - or they got another [i[model in the works.

Within a year I would expect both some China deal and another model. With Russia a lock (with two carriers), the big barriers to global iPhone rollout seem to be eroding pretty quickly.
http://jadedconsumer.blogspot.com/2008/08/iphone-to-lay-seige-to-moscow-by-winter.html

As ridiculous as this sounds, I think the iPhone feature improvement that is likely to most impact sales is the elimination of the recessed stereo jack, making the iPhone a suitable iPod substitute (ie, you don't need dongles and adapters you don't carry with you, you can actually use the phone as an iPod as-is). Anything that increases battery or storage will be gobbled up by folks who like carrying their huge music collections with them.

Snow Leopard performance advantages and size reductions hold promise of improving life on mobile devices. With Snow Leopard shipping "in about a year" and hardware sales exploding, I expect a big hit of software revenues to hit about the end of 1H calendar '09. Assuming Apple does cut margins to take share, the software revenue should provide some return of margins: the enhanced installed base into which Apple will be selling the software will mean more units than Apple used to be able to sell. With Leopard offering a hardware upgrade on a DVD, it should sell well to people hoping to stretch the life of existing hardware -- and people interested in taking advantage of whatever service bundling Leopard enables. I'm thinking that with built-in Exchange support, Apple will be offering more push and synch services through APIs exposed to third party developers.

I'm thinking that Apple's habit of making OS upgrades a performance enhancement rather than a reason to force hardware replacement is something that aids Apple's software sales. I should go back and look at historical adoption statistics to see if data bears this out.

At any rate, the idea of selling several tens of millions of phones next year is pretty slick -- it's a great place to be, atop a platform getting this kind of adoption. Sure, WinMobile has a lot of units, but I'm wondering if the software revenues on that platform (given the handset power, the users' tendency to buy software, and so on) are really anything like the draw of the iPhone opportunity.

I see iPhone as a magnet for new Cocoa developmers.

Take care,
--Tex.