More than 900 million iPhone devices are actively installed around the world. For comparison, as at May 2017, there were more than 2 billion Android devices in the world that were active monthly. If you expand that to a year, you may have up to 2.2 billion Android devices active yearly. This disparity is the reason Apple needs to open its ecosystem to compete for services which is growing in the company.
It’s not surprising that Apple has a massive active install base of iPhones across the globe, but we now finally have an exact number to put behind it. During its Q1 earnings call, CFO Luca Maestri shared the install base for the first time.
“Our global active install base of iPhone continues to grow and has reached an all-time high at the end of December,” Maestri said. “We are disclosing that number now for the first time; it has surpassed 900 million devices.”
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That’s a good number for Apple anyway, considering its exclusive and premium nature, and yet with almost a billion users worldwide. As Apple gains ground on its services division, it doesn’t really need to open up completely its ecosystem for all comers, because that could also hit its brand perception; a more slippery path to go.
It’s poised to lower the prices of iPhones, but it must be done strategically, in order to maintain its aura and class. iPhone/iOS is never Android, and there’s no need to become one. Just create another business model innovation at your own level, it doesn’t necessarily have to mass-produce in order to command big market share in its services division, just little adjustment here and there should be enough.
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