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Did you know: Apple sold its most expensive phones in history in its last quarter

By Victor H.

Updated: Jan 27, 2016, 6:49 AM

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Did you know: Apple sold its most expensive phones in history in its last quarter

In the past few years - but most noticeably, in the past year alone - Apple has become an iPhone company.

While the iPhone has quickly grown in popularity and contributes more than 50% of Apple's revenue since around 2012, it was 2014 and 2015 when its contribution to the total Apple revenue surged to nearly 70%. In Q2 2015, a record 69.4% of Apple's revenue came from the iPhone and in the most recent quarter ending December 2015 (fiscal Q1 2016 in Apple's books), the iPhone brought a whopping 68% of the total revenue streams at Cupertino.

iPhone contributed 68% of the total Apple revenue in Q1 2016 (all figures represent revenue in million $USD)

In pure monetary terms, the iPhone had its best quarter ever in Q1 2016: it raked in $51.635 billion in revenue.

Apple is an iPhone company

What's particularly interesting is that Apple broke one other record: the average selling price (ASP) of an iPhone reached its highest in Q1 2016. People paid an average of $691 for an iPhone. In the same quarter of last year, Apple got close with an iPhone ASP of $687, but looking back in history, we see that iPhone ASP was quite volatile and in Q3 2014 it stood at the comparatively low $564.

The factors that have certainly contributed to rising ASP are the demand for the pricier, larger screen Plus version of the iPhone and the availability of more expensive, 128GB iPhone models in the past couple of years.

While we don't have the exact average selling price of other manufacturers, it's clear that no one even comes close to Apple in this regard. Samsung, LG and others all sell affordable smartphones that water down the ASP to levels multiple times lower than that.

This is particularly notable given the challenging global economic conditions and the fact that Apple has actually increased prices due to those factors in Q1 2016. Yet, the company managed to break its sales record for iPhones again - both in terms of units and revenue.