Post date: Jun 29, 2012 10:23:17 PM
The Apple iPhone celebrates five years as the smartphone to beat with a new model due later this year and Samsung heating up the competition.
USA-IPHONE ANNIVERSARY - CONWAY G. GITTENS, REUTERS REPORTER SAYING:
"It's been five years since this - the iPhone went on sale..... Apple and the world have yet to look back."
If iPhone was a country - it would have a bigger GDP than Guatemala, Serbia, Costa Rica, Yemen and Kenya.
A quarter of a billion iPhones have shipped worldwide, enough to stretch around 70 percent of the earth.And while Apple has just under 10 percent of the world's handsets, the iPhone makes up nearly three-quarters of the industry's profits.
When it comes down to dollars: iPhone sales were more than double the iPad in 2011.
It's not an understatement to say the iPhone has a positive impact on the economy beyond just those sales figures, says Beth Ann Bovino, senior economist, at Standard and Poor's
BETH ANN BOVINO, SENIOR ECONOMIST, STANDARD & POOR'S SAYING:
"You can do your emails from your iPhone for work. You can edit reports from your iPhone. You can do a lot of other factors that certainly helped productivity here and abroad. That's a positive sign of course you still have to turn off that - you still have to turn off your version of Angry Birds to be able to do that work and if you do so this is a positive for growth."
And there's more to the so-called iConomy. A whole industry now exists because of the iPhone
More than half a million apps have been created; with 30 billion downloads from the App store; and when you add in the iPad and Android products, almost a million apps have been launched, creating nearly half a million jobs in just five years.
The numbers have paid off for Apple and its shareholders:
The company has a market cap of more than $500 billion dollars compared to $94 billion just before the launch.
And look at the share price: trading in the $100 dollar range then, and now, it's at the better half of $500 a share.
CONWAY G. GITTENS, REUTERS REPORTER SAYING:
"Competition, however, is on the horizon, Android phones have caught on quickly, with Samsung emerging as a formidable foe. So the battle is set for when the new iPhone comes out later this year."
Conway Gittens, Reuters