Asymco’s Horace Dediu has a great slant on news that Apple recently sold its billionth iPhone. He points out that not only does this make it the best-selling phone of all time, it actually long ago became the best-selling product ever …
Nothing else he checked even comes close. Second position was taken by the Harry Potter series of books, whose 450M sales are mind-blowingly huge but still less than half those achieved by the iPhone in its nine-year history.
Other best-selling products don’t even come close – whether it’s the world’s best-selling car (VW Beetle, at 21.5M – note that Tesla took 400K pre-orders for its Model 3), or the top-selling games console (Playstation, at 382M).
Dediu’s full list of best-selling products in a range of categories is:
- Car model: VW Beetle 21.5 million
- Car brand: Toyota Corolla 43 million
- Music Album: Thriller 70 million
- Vehicle: Honda Super Cub 87 million
- Book Title: Lord of the Rings 150 million
- Toy: Rubik’s Cube 350 million
- Game console: Playstation 382 million
- Book series: Harry Potter Series 450 million
- Mobile Phone: iPhone 1 billion
