Apple has sold more than 10 million iPhone and iPhone 6 Plus devices over the past three days, setting a new company record.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said that the sales of the new devices exceeded expectations:
“We would like to thank all of our customers for making this our best launch ever, shattering all previous sell-through records by a large margin. While our team managed the manufacturing ramp better than ever before, we could have sold many more iPhones with greater supply and we are working hard to fill orders as quickly as possible.”
The overwhelming reception of Apple’s latest devices is good news for the company. Apple’s share in the global smartphone market has been dropping over the past few years. It’s second quarter share of the market in 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011, were 11.7%, 13%, 16.6%, and 18.8% respectively.
The drop in the company’s share in the smartphone market is mainly because of increasing popularity of smartphones using Google’s Android operating system.
According to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley, Apple accounted for 76% of smartphone industry profits in the fourth quarter of 2013, which means that it still has a healthy mobile business.
Apple sold a million more units of the new iPhone 6 devices in its first three days compared to last year’s release of the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C (which sold 9 million in three days).
The new devices have larger screens than previous models, with the standard iPhone 6 having a 4.7-inch display and the iPhone 6 Plus equipped with a 5.5 inch display. The phones both run on Apple’s 64-bit A8 processor and come with Apple’s iOS8.