10m iPhone 6 within 3 days

Now that the iPhone 6 is available for 3 days, Apple released the sales number... breaking a new record with 10 million phones sold!

Updating the chart started for the 24 hour sales,  we see that while the growth of sales is still present, it's is not as dramatic as it was for the iPhone 5S.

In $ terms, considering a price of $1,000 and up, it's more than $10 billion of revenues in just 3 days that Apple generated!

How are iPhone 6 first day sales comparing to previous iPhone? Fasten your seat belt...

Curious about the sales numbers Apple just released for iPhone 6, I scrolled through the previous year numbers and charted them.

Open for pre-orders on september 12th, it's 4 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus which were bought over 24 hours.

Going through previous launches shows that it's 2x better than iPhone 5 launch in 2012. 

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sold 2x more within 24 hours than iPhone 5.
2013's iPhone 5S and 5C numbers are not available.

The ratio of 3 day sales over 24 hour sales from 2010 (2.8x) and 2012 (2.5x) leads to believe that 3 day sales will reach 10 to 11.2 million for the iPhone 6 family this year.

How much iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will be sold within 3 days? Probably around 10-11m.

How many iPhone will be sold during the last quarter of the year? It was 48 million in 2012 and 51 million in 2013, with the ratio of sales over Q4 divided by 3 days sales of the new iPhone dropping from 9.6 to 5.7. The range of iPhone 6 family sales would then be 57 to 97 million.

We will get the answer in January!

For those who prefer tables over charts, here are the numbers from Apple's press releases.

iPhone 5 is now available in 26 countries: HK is still the cheapest

Apple released the new iPhone 5 in more countries on September 28. The comparator of iPhone prices around the world now includes them.

The US still don't have an unlocked iPhone, hence the visible price is not comparable (it goes with a contract).
Canada is the cheapest then, but that's before Sales Tax that are added while ordering, depending on the shipping address in Canada.
Hong Kong has no Sales Tax or equivalent, therefore the visible price is the one accessible to customer, and the cheapest in the world!

The comparator now includes a currency selector for everyone to be able to choose the currency they are confortable with to do the comparison!

Apple decides that a $100bn cash balance is a minimum

Apple's grand plan to use its huge cash balance: Not to touch it!

Currently, Apple has $98bn cash; that's around $105 per share (941.6m diluted shares at Q1).

During its call on March 19th, Apple announced that around $45bn will be spent over the next 3 years (Apple Press Release and call transcript).

However, as the company generates so much cash (like $16bn in the quarter from Sept to Dec alone), the balance will actually continue to grow; probably to around $200bn (considering 50bn cash flow a year... which is actually very conservative) by the end of the program.

In details of the plan, there will be

• a $2.65 quarterly dividend, from Q4 2012, ie. the quarter from July to September, that's $2.5bn per quarter, and a 1.8% yield on current $600 stock price.
• a 3-year $10bn shares repurchase program, to start in fiscal year 2013, ie. from October 1, 2012. The main goal of this program is to neutralise dilution from employee. At today's stock price of $600, that's around 16.6m shares, 1.7% of the company's shares.

A reason mentioned for not distributing more is that $64bn of the cash is outside of the US (and significant part of the future generated cash will be outside of the US too), hence significant tax impact should it be brought back for distribution.