In the midst of Apple’s strong Q3 2025 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook dropped a quiet but remarkable milestone: the company has officially shipped over three billion iPhones since the original model launched in 2007.
Cook made the announcement with little fanfare, noting: “We also recently marked a significant milestone. We shipped the 3 billionth iPhone since its launch in 2007.” That’s a staggering figure for a device that redefined mobile computing and arguably reshaped the tech industry itself.
Apple hit the 1-billion iPhone mark in July 2016, nine years after the original iPhone debuted. The 2-billion milestone was never formally announced, but analysts believe it happened around September 2021. Now, less than four years later, the iPhone has crossed the 3-billion threshold — showing that despite market saturation and slowing global smartphone growth, Apple’s flagship product still has momentum.
The announcement is particularly striking given that Apple stopped reporting unit sales of its devices in late 2018. At the time, then-CFO Luca Maestri argued that quarterly unit sales were no longer a meaningful metric of business health. Since then, Apple has focused more on revenue, services, and active installed base as indicators of success.
Even so, shipping three billion iPhones is a figure that speaks for itself. It highlights not just Apple’s ability to keep selling high-end hardware year after year, but also the strength of the broader ecosystem that keeps users coming back — from iOS and the App Store to iCloud and AppleCare.
As Apple pushes into the AI era and prepares to launch more intelligence-driven features across its devices, the iPhone remains the centre of that universe. Three billion shipped — and counting.
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