iPhone Turning Five Years Old with 250 Million Units Sold, $150 Billion in Revenue

While Apple first showed off the original iPhone at Macworld San Francisco in January 2007, the device did not launch until six months later, officially arriving on June 29, 2007. With the iPhone's fifth birthday coming later this week, research firm Strategy Analytics published a brief press release noting that Apple has now sold 250 million iPhones that have generated roughly $150 billion in revenue for the company over the product's lifetime.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple has generated US$150 billion of cumulative revenues for its iPhone family in the first five years since launch in June 2007. A quarter of a billion iPhones have been shipped cumulatively worldwide.

Neil Shah, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “Apple’s first iPhone was launched commercially in the United States on June 29, 2007. Between June 2007 and June 2012, we estimate the iPhone family of models has generated US$150 billion of cumulative revenues worldwide for Apple. This is an impressive achievement and it illustrates just how popular the iPhone has become during the past five years.”

With iPhone sales continuing to accelerate, more than 100 million of those unit sales have come during the past year. The iPhone 4S has marked a significant part of the surge, with over 35 million units sold in each of the past two quarters.

Business Insider summarizes some of the iPhone's impact on business, noting that the device now generates more quarterly revenue than Microsoft's entire business, generates more profit than GE, Microsoft, or Google, and has remade the technology industry with its dominating position.