Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than Macs over 28 years

Horace Dedi, an analyst at Asymco, was looking at Apple's sales figures for its various products when he noticed an amazing statistic. Apple's iOS products had such a great year in 2011 that they outsold the number of Macs sold. Well, that sounds like no big deal, except that the iOS devices outsold the number of Macs sold in the entire 28 year existence of the product line. Last year Apple sold 156 million iOS devices while the total number of Mac sold  all time is 122 million.

The total number of iOS devices sold since the first one, the Apple iPhone, was launched in 2007 is 316 million. That means that nearly half of all iOS sales took place last year. And while iOS sales were led in the fourth quarter of 2011 by the record 37 million units of the Apple iPhone 4S that were sold, it is the large jump in sales of the Apple iPad that really helped iOS devices at the cash register. To date, Apple has sold 55 million of its tablets, a figure that surprises even Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook noted at a Goldman Sachs conference that while it took Apple 22 years to sell 55 million Macs, it took them 5 years to sell 22 million iPods and 3 years to sell that many Apple iPhones. As for the Apple iPad, Cook says the tablet is "on a trajectory that's off the charts." Speculation is that the next generation of the tablet to be introduced on March 7th with some changes to the design and specs of the device.

source: Asymco via AppleInsider