The best selling product of all time – Asymco
Ten years ago, I noted that the iPhone was the most popular product of all time. At the time, it had just crossed 1 billion units sold. This exceeded the quantities of other categories I considered comparable. In the comments there was a furious debate on whether I was measuring popularity correctly. In my defense I pointed out that consumables should not count, nor free products or pieces of content. By the metrics of 2016, I argued, one billion sold exceeded any of the other candidate ‘bestsellers’. And it wasn’t even one thing… The iPhone is not only the best-selling mobile phone but also the best-selling music player, the best-selling camera, the best-selling video screen and the best-selling computer of all time. I noted that it did all that in less than nine years and challenged readers to wonder what it will do in the next nine. Well, wonder no more. Since then, another 2.4 billion iPhone have been sold. That is to say, after becoming the all-time best-seller, it accelerated to