Author: Horace Dediu

Steve Jobs forecasts iPhone sales to grow at least 50% y/y

Well, not exactly.

During the WWDC keynote Steve Jobs announced that “we will ship 10’s of millions of FaceTime devices in 2010”.  Since only iPhone 4 currently runs FaceTime(*) then it stands to reason that there will be “10’s of millions” of iPhone 4 devices sold.  And since the year is half over, it means we can divide “10’s of millions” over two quarters.  That puts sales in the 10+ million range per quarter.

My current forecast shows 11 million in Q3 and 13 million in Q4 corresponding to 50% y/y growth.

Steve Jobs seems to be indicating this is well within reason.

(*) one exception to this assumption is that he’s including a future iPod touch running FaceTime.  This may very well be the case when the iPod line-up will be released probably in October.

New data on iTunes: 11 billion downloaded

When Steve Jobs announced 150 million accounts with credit cards on the iTunes Store, iBookstore and App Store, he stated that as far as he knows it has “the most accounts of any store on the web”.

More interesting is the claim that iTunes has enjoyed 16 billion downloads.

Subtracting the 5 billion app downloads, that leads to Music+Video adding up to 11 billion (books at 5 million is still too small to make an impact.)

The last download data on iTunes was in February when Apple reported 10 billion songs downloaded. The new data implies the daily download rate is about 9.3 million per day.  The forecast I had suggested 11.1 billion by June 1 so it’s come in a bit less than expected.

12 billion songs is expected in September.

The graph that follows shows actual and forecast cumulative downloads for the App Store and iTunes store based on months after launch.  As it shows, 5 billion apps took 24 months whereas 5 billion songs took 46 months.

This graph shows the download rates.  The green line (apps) clearly overtakes the slowing blue line (songs/media).

Android vs. Google Part III

Revised language for section 3.3.9 of Apple’s developer agreement, concerning the use of data collection:

The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent

via Apple Makes Good on Steve Jobs’s Promise, Invites Other Advertisers. But What About Google’s AdMob? | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.

Apple is stating that user data must be handled by organizations that are strictly independent.  If the ad service provider is part of an organization that either competes with Apple’s devices or platform, it’s not independent.

AdMob would have been allowed to operate unhindered on iOS but AdMob as part of Google is not.

Conversely, if Google were to abandon Android, the path to riches would be open again.  As shown several times already, by pursuing a mobile device platform Google strategically abandoned some significant revenue opportunities in exchange for some extraordinarily high costs.

Readers of this blog should not be surprised.

Safari claims 200 million installed base, WebKit at 500 million

Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support,” said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine runs on over 500 million devices

via AppleInsider | Apple releases Safari 5 with extensions, expanded HTML5 support.

Safari’s installed base includes Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad as well as the number of Windows versions.  Assuming 45 million Macs, there are probably around 50 million PCs using Safari.

WebKit includes all iOS devices as well all Android and Symbian/S60 and Palm Pre.

Was Quattro a bargain? Was AdMob a rip-off?

Apple’s announcement of $60 million booked revenues for iAd, of which 60% is meant for developers implies $24 million operating profit for the second half of 2010.  Assuming this rate doubles $100 million for 2011, it becomes clear that the acquisition of Quattro for $250 million is reasonable (2.5x gross earnings) and that the AdMob price of $750 million seems expensive.

Now Google may have justification for the $750 million along the lines of income from non-Apple platforms, but the CPMs for Admob are a fraction (perhaps 10%) of what iAd is able to obtain.  Therefore, it’s a pretty fair conclusion that Google did not get a bargain.

asymco | One Hundred Million

My prediction is that sometime next year Apple will announce the 100 millionth iPhone OS device sold, making the iPhone the fastest selling platform in history. The iPhone will have been on the market for three years.

via asymco | One Hundred Million.

Steve Jobs today: “This month we will sell the 100 millionth iOS device.”