Apple (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has taken plenty of flack for running a company that is supposedly well past its glory days—and the iPhone smartphone franchise is sometimes dismissed as a spent force, losing ground to more innovative brands such as Android and Samsung Well, here’s a little perspective for the Apple-haters.
The iPhone 5s and 5c sold a record 9 million units during the first weekend after its launch. Consider this: The brand’s sales haul over the last four reported quarters eclipses that of such companies as Home Depot (HD), Microsoft (MSFT), Target (TGT), Goldman Sachs (GS), Amazon (AMZN), PepsiCo (PEP), Comcast (CMCSA), Dell (DELL), Google (GOOG), Pfizer (PFE), and UPS (UPS).
If this single product were its own company in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, IPhone Inc. would outsell 474 of those companies—ranking between Wells Fargo (WFC) ($90.5 billion) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC) ($84.9 billion). The iPhone’s $88.4 billion in annualized revenue tops 21 of the 30 component companies in the Dow Jones industrial average—it would be the ninth-biggest stock in the Dow 30:
Look at that again, this time focusing on the 21 Dow companies the iPhone beats:
One more fun fact: The majority of Apple sales comes from this one product—iPhone sales ($88.4 billion) are greater than the sum of Apple’s remaining products—including the iPad, Mac laptops and desktops, and iTunes—combined ($81 billion).
Listen Up Apple-Haters: IPhone Sales Eclipse Microsoft and Amazon Revenue - Businessweek