Yesterday, in its fiscal Q4 08 financial results, Apple revealed that their iPhone has surpassed Research In Motion’s Blackberry sales, all in a total of one year. Apple blew past and exceeded it’s past 4 quarters, selling more than the expected 4 million units of iPhones. Apple cleared nearly 6.9 million iPhones. In this telling report, Apple is now the 3rd largest mobile phone maker by revenue, trailing just behind Nokia and Samsung. Apple is ahead of once giants Sony, LG, Motorola and RIM.
Apple also exceeded sales estimates in the Mac and iPod department as well, selling more Macs than in any quarter and more ipods than any non-holiday quarter. With Macs, Apple sold 2.611 million, more than the company has ever sold in one quarter in its history.
From Apple Insider: “Apple last week saw a “very, very strong launch” of new notebooks, according to Jobs, although the company separately notes that rumors and press leading up to the launch likely caused customers to delay their new Mac purchases until the new MacBooks were released. Apple is unsure how much the economy impacted Mac sales.
Over 90 percent of the new Mac notebooks now ship with LED backlights. They also represent the company’s greenest products ever. “You’ll hear more about this in the future,” Jobs said.
The unibody MacBooks are primarily responsible for Apple’s earlier low-margin guidance. September’s iPod refresh also played a role in the guidance.
Jobs said netbooks still represent a “nascent category.” He considers the iPhone a form of entrant to the netbook category as it performs many of the functions, just in a smaller form factor. That said, he noted that Apple hold some very “interesting ideas” in the netbook arena should the field evolve into a booming market segment.”