I can't believe it. The markets may be crashing down, but it seems like a lot of people don't care doshing out money for an expensive handset, even if it might be the last thing they buy. 6.1m Crackberries are believable, after all the business sector buys them; but the iPhone is a consumer device.

Anyway, Jobs does have a point: no-one will move to the competition ... because they're out of money and can't buy *any* smartphones right now. Not even another iPhone, as well. ;) Gotta see how the iPhone fares this quarter as well; this one will reflect how bad the economy goes.

....cause there are going to be some people frothing at the mouth in righteous indignation about this.

I'm looking at you Webby. Perhaps their success despite their 'documented' sh*tness means that everybody are just stupid sheeple? Or maybe it means you're just crying out in the dark. Alone.

"Sales of Macs and iPods also went gangbusters."

For Macs, that would be "gangbusters" in what sense? They had a 3.5% worldwide market share last quarter, and are now down to 3.25%.

I am no Apple fan, but the iPhone is something amazing, I have tried a few touch screen phones in past month, WM6, this that, opera this, WinIntExplorer that, all crap, but on the iPhone, its just how one would expect the net to work on a mini mobile, smooth and everything in the right place, if it had a better battery life and a decent camera, it would wipe the market clean, nothing else can compare to it.

How long has Cade Metz warned, but like Cassandra's prophecies the warnings go unheeded.

Woe to us in this time of tribulation

In the sense of selling 2.6 million Macs and 11 million iPods, more than they ever have in a single quarter, maybe?

Jobs specifically said yesterday "There are some customers which we chose not to serve", which obviously limits the market that is available to Apple in the first place. That said, I don't think I've ever heard market share discussed in the earnings call.

I've personaly never liked apple corp or their business tactics... or redmond for that matter, or IBM, or any of the big technology makers really (although I make an exception for Slimdevices.. now part of logitech.. but they're probably just too small for me to hear about their evil ways yet).

I guess the problem (well, from a geek consumer point of view anyway) is that you have teams of brilliant engineers who are supervised by monkies who in turn are ruled over by lemurs who take their orders from mysterious sloths with no apparent motives than getting more sleeping time for themselves (the engineer>monkey>lemur>sloth business model is a metaphor btw, no need to start dropping shares just yet... there are as far as I know only humans working in the before mentioned companies.. not counting mascots).

Now, I don't think I would ever buy an iPhone, but this has more to do with the fact that I don't really have any need for a smart phone rather than a dislike of apple products. Truth is, I rather like apple products (I own a Ipod mini with a custom battery and flash storage), and I would love to get my dirty paws on a macbook (although I would probably run winxp on it rather than macos)... their design team for some reason seem to always outdo everyone else in the business :o)

Who knows, if they manage to saturise their current market (people who have loads of cash and are willing to pay a bit (ok, quite a bit) extra for pretty and high spec computers) they may decide to make some models for those of us who realise just how fast computer technology becomes obsolete (I have a tendency to look for the equilibrium between price, specs and the speed at which it will be outdated.. which is why I probably will never own a macbook :o/)

So, let us not boo apples increased market share (although, I believe a previous poster stated that global sales had in fact dropped.. but it's quarter past eight and I'm too lazy to check ;o), but hope that it leads to them eventually releasing a low spec macbook for those of us who are too mindful of the rate at which technology develops to buy pay premiums just to get the latest and fastest into our solid aluminium laptops :o)

and if they ever do release a low cost macbook I will probably buy one, even if I will probably run xp on it :o)

american forces network radio out of Mannheim , Germany this morning said that the US military was seriously considering purchasing truckloads of iPhone as a 'perfect' convergent network device.

brings all sorts of INFOSEC worries to mind, but then I suppose many grunts have Nokia/Motorola at present..

I would expect a consumer device to outsell a business tool because there are loads of status kids out there who want one just because they have been told they are great. You might also get the odd company that supports them for their sales monkeys but serious business is not going to adopt them until they clean up the corporate control side of things. Companies deploy blackberries for one reason and one reason only... they can control the device by policy. It's the same reason we don't have firefox in the enterprise - I can't configure it or lock it down using Active Directory. Blackberry do excellent policy based control using BES and that means I can force encryption on the device, remote kill a lost device and ensure that my users are setting password, all things I can't ensure with an iamstupidPhone and that's why we don't support them and don't allow our users to download any company information including email on the device.

Measuring Apple worldwide market share as an indication of their success is pointless. How many Chinese do you think can afford to buy expensive Apple products?

With so many cheap cars being produced these days Ferarri's worldwide market share is steadily dropping. Does that make them any less successful as a car company?

Face it buddy, 6.9 million people can't all be wrong. Its just a well integrated package with a fantastic user interface. Pity about the camera but I've never bought a phone for the camera and I've not used the one on my iPhone yet. Most users don't care about Apple's restrictive practices around app development. Sales would probably go up even more if the camera was improved.

Yes it is currently mainly a consumer device, but expect it to start gaining a bigger footprint in business which in turn will probably have senior execs asking their IT departments to start supporting Macs as well.

Everyone I know who has a Blackberry (with one exception) has it supplied by their employer, everyone I know who has an iPhone own it privately and went out and bought iPhone2 as soon as it came out to replace their v1. The point being businesses don't replace stuff for the sake of it, maybe this contributed? I wonder what the sales will be in the next quarter/half/year?

Locked up proprietary devices. The success of the iPhone, and netbooks like the EEE suggest that to most consumers, configuration options and openness are an inconvenience, rather than a benefit. I suspect that in the future, using a PC as they're used today will be viewed in the same light as driving a car with manual transmission is in the states.

"He also said Apple, with its $25bn in cash, could benefit from current market conditions."

Yes, by buying themselves a bank :-)

The Bank of Apple™©

Then fanboys could make a deposit, of a slightly different nature to their usual, whenever Apple is mentioned. :-)

Bye

Apple sell 10% (ish) more hand-sets than RIM, but the revenue from them is 100% more than RIM. Rip-off much ??

If you buy a Mac you basically get 4 computers in one - OS X, Unix, Linux and Windows. Not bad for a sect led by a megalomaniac Midas. If you buy one of the "gadgets" you get more than basics that work smoothly and do what they do and more. WTF else do you need? Of course you want more, and that'll come - in the meantime keep using your crappy crippled copycat shit or antediluvian arsewipe also-ran artifacts. And lay off the futile Fanboi farty fiddle-faddle.

(Paris loves making the beast with two Macs...)

my 9 year old daughter thinks the iPhone is "very kool" and would like one

my 16 year old daughter (permanently attached to her phone of course) is "why? what's the point in it?"

says it all, it's a bling bling thing my friend

me? I am a corporate user so I'll stick with my Blackberry thank you, let's see how Apple fares selling at the very top end of the market in a recession, my guess is that there is an iceberg in all that 'fog' :)

.

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PS "whopping 6.9 million iPhones" ROFLMAO, come on Reg "whopping"? in what sense in a 3Q market of 310m units is this "whopping" - you know the one where Nokia sold 117.8m units - please stop doing what you accuse other journalists writing about Phorm of doing, regurgitating press releases! we expect better from you

and . . Mr Jobs. you maybe 3rd but so far behind you can't even see them, there again reality has never been a strong point with you eh?

I'm not dising the I-phone but this does highlight that you can do anything with stats.

"Jobs went on to declare Apple the third largest seller of mobile phones as measured by revenue, behind No. 1 Nokia and No. 2 Samsung."

So if I design the "Banana j-Phone 3G with go faster stripes" make 1 example and then sell it to myself for $7Billion do I become the 3rd largest producer of mobile phones by revenue??

SInce the i-Phone is very highly priced compared to a lot of other phones, I don't think market share by revenue is a true indicator of market share. I think Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, LG etc have larger market share by volume.

is the iPhone is a one model wonder. It may be great now, but what will they have in a years time? Most handeset manufacturers were caught off guard and the iPhone took advantage of a hole in the market i.e. it had a decent interface.

But now that hole is being plugged. So what next for the iPhone, now it has some decent competition...for example the Crackberry Storm looks like the dogs dangly bits.....

Surely the question extends beyond what could Apple add to the iPhone to where now for the smartphone? If it is now at last browsing the proper web, doing email with Office and PDF attachments and making calls then surely all of the manufacturers are going to need to scramble around a bit for ideas? The only people I'm aware of who really care about megapixel counts and whether or not a platform is open are the ones who post to internet technology sites.

I'll bet that Apple are wagering on the Application Store turning their phone into a successful-enough handheld gaming device to fend off the generic smartphones, much as usability + Snake bought Nokia most of their market share in the 90s.

Also, @"Revenue??" By Anonymous Coward, counting sales to yourself as revenue reported to shareholders is the sort of genius idea that put Enron where it is today.

How many of those 117m phones sold by Nokia were smartphones?

Apple's iPhone sales amount to around 25% of total smartphone sales for Q3. I call that whopping. It's especially outstanding for a company that has only been selling their device for two years and only have one current model at that.

"So if I design the "Banana j-Phone 3G with go faster stripes" make 1 example and then sell it to myself for $7Billion do I become the 3rd largest producer of mobile phones by revenue??"

So, what's the VAT on $7 Billion?

Can you please! please! please! stop calling this the Jesus phone. I find it very offensive that you have seen fit to use a Jesus's name to describe this stupid phone. No! I'm not a Christian... I am a Muslim... All Prophets of God are supposed to be dear to us.

Market share matters for a computer maker with a proprietary OS because it largely determines the availability of software for that OS. There are over 30 Windows customers for every OSX customer, so why waste time and money creating or maintaining software for OSX?

Car owners aren't a comparable case because they buy few if any add-ons (except gas and service), and the product works fine as delivered. That's why you see Apple having to write and give away more and more application software themselves, even though this further undermines the software vendors.

I nearly agreed with you untill I saw 'ROFLMAO' .....