Applelot in the News

For months, the community of Applelot (at the Investor Village Apple Sanity stock board), linked with the Mac Observer’s finance board, have been calculating the number of iPhones manufactured. They have done that work by capturing and tracking the unique IMEI numbers (similar to serial numbers) that are printed on every iPhone.

The work of the Applelot community shows that plenty of iPhones have now been manufactured for Apple to have met its self-imposed goal of 10 million iPhones sold in 2008, and the general press is picking up the story. For example, the following was posted on Wired on October 7, 2008.

We never really know how many of anything Apple has sold until we are told, usually by Steve Jobs as the warm up to a keynote speech. But that doesn’t stop people guessing. And some guesses have had a little more research than others.

The folks at Mac Observer teamed up with the IV AAPL Sanity Board to count the IMEI numbers of iPhones (the IMEI is a unique cellphone hardware ID number). These they put together in a spreadsheet. According to the numbers, Apple has sold almost 10 million iPhone 3Gs. That’s the new one, which has been on sale for just under three months. Apple stated that it planned to sell ten million iPhones of all kinds by the end of 2008. It looks like it hit that goal early.

Those numbers aren’t quite as accurate as we might think, though. The numbers within the IMEI can be used to track batches and numbers of phones manufactured, but not the number sold. There could be inventory floating around in storerooms and repair shops. But the fact that this many have been made means that, according to financial blog Seeking Alpha, there are at least seven million 3G iPhones in the hands of users.

For the record, the latest iPhone listed on the spreadsheet is no 9,190,680, an 8GB black model which was sold three days ago on October 4th.

Phone Sales Drastically Surpass Q4 Consensus; Apple Reaches 10m Goal [Seeking Alpha via Fortune]

Topic: Calling ALL 3G iPhone OWNERS! [Mac Observer Forums]

The Spreadsheet [Google Docs]