Apple Sells Their Target- Ten Million iPhones!

07/10/08

According to analysts Apple has managed to reach their 10 million sold iPhones for 2008 three months before the actual end of the year. It looks like Apple has sold from 7 to 7.5 million iPhones in Q4 of the fiscal year (Q3 of 2008). That’s from 2 to 3 million more than it was previously estimated by specialists.

How do they count all those sold iPhones? Well that’s actually pretty simple. Simply track the IMEI. The IMEI is the International Mobile Equipment Identity number composed by an unique 15 digit code. The IMEI is placed on the back of the box of the iPhone. From the 15 digits there are two 6-digit sequences which are very important. One of them, the TAC or Type Allocation Code shows a particular build or set of manufactured iPhones. The other 6 digit number is unique to each iPhones. Which means every TAC has a maximum of one million iPhones attached to it.

Therefore it wasn’t that difficult for the Mac Observer guys to track the IMEI and count the 3G iPhones sold. By September Apple had about 8 million 3G iPhones manufactured. The last IMEI number was 9,190,680 and it matches an 8GB iPhone manufactured on September 29 and sold yesterday. However that doesn’t mean that all those 10 million iPhones out there have been sold to date. But they are likely to sell in the next three months. We’ll see in a couple of months exactly how many iPhones Apple has sold worldwide in 2008.
Via MobileWhack