Business

Apple hits 250M units sold; next 250M harder

Five years into the smartphone revolution begun by Apple in 2007, the Cupertino, Calif., company likely reached a quiet milestone in the past week — selling its 250 millionth iPhone.

That’s a stunning number for a product — not as ubiquitous as hamburgers or as iconic as baseball — but a handheld computer that, at $600 a pop, has generated more than a $150 billion in sales for Apple, helping it become along the way the world’s most valuable company.

That’s more revenue than McDonald’s and Major League Baseball have rung up over the same period — combined.

“For a premium device to reach this milestone is exemplary,” said Neil Shah, a researcher with Strategy Analytics.

Company statistics show that 244.3 million iPhones were sold through June 30 — and that they were selling last quarter at the rate of two million a week. That’s down from 2.7 million a week in the first three months of the year.

Assuming a similar cooling of sales continued into the current quarter, iPhone No. 250,000,000 was likely sold in the last week.

Still, while Apple blazed to a quarter-billion iPhones sold, it’s the next quarter -billion that will prove more challenging, some Wall Street analysts said. The market has moved beyond the developed world into emerging economies, where consumers might not be as quick to pay big bucks for a smartphone — especially with so many less expensive alternatives flooding the market, analysts said.

For example, Samsung’s Android smartphones have overtaken Apple in the quarterly phone wars, selling more than 40 million last quarter to Apple’s 26 million.

The increased competition may have led to Apple producing results that missed Wall Street expectation in two of the last four quarters. Plus, Apple shares, which have been among the hottest during the past two years, rising 127 percent, have been flat in the past four-plus months.

But, if the past is prologue, the iPhone 5 may be Apple’s ticket back to the top. The numbers show Apple racks up huge sales increases with every new iPhone.

Apple sold 17 million phones in the last quarter of sales of the iPhone 4 and 37 million phones during the first quarter of the 4S — a rate of 2.8 million a week. The iPhone 5, expected in stores this fall, could see sales of more than 50 million in the fourth quarter.

It also means challenges, according to Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners, who said the smartphone has penetrated 50 percent of the market, but those were the early adopters willing to spend, and the next 50 percent might not be so Apple hungry.

“The low end is where growth continues to be,” Gillis said, and that could pressure Apple’s margins, if consumers opt for cheaper outdated iPhones that can cost them nothing if subsidized by carriers.

Also, the iPhone 5, if it is redesigned from the ground up, is likely to cost Apple more to make.