A joint project between the Apple Finance Board (AFB) and Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board has been tracking the IMEI numbers from as many iPhone 3Gs as possible, placing the results in a Google Docs spreadsheet, in an attempt to judge how many have been manufactured (note: not sold).At the 2007 Macworld event, Steve Jobs predicted that Apple would manufacture 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Based on the current numbers at the AFB project, at least two analysts have concluded that Apple's already reached that mark.
The IMEI number is used to identify a GSM phone to a network. It's not unique to the iPhone, in case you were wondering. It's a 15-digit number (14 + a check digit), and within it are two 6-digit sequences of numbers. The first is the TAC, or Type Allocation code (which signifies a "build," while the second is unique to each individual iPhone produced in that "build." Thus, at least for the iPhone, one million iPhones can be registered to a specific TAC.
The latest IMEI data point recorded in the spreadsheet is 9,190,680 -- an 8GB Black iPhone recorded as manufactured on September 29 and sold on October 5. Now, based on the fact that we know that coming into its Q4 (Q3 calendar), Apple had already sold 2.42 million first-generation iPhones, they've already topped 10 million.
And even if somehow that's off by a large amount, this being October, they will beat their target date for 10 million iPhones by nearly 3 months.
That said, it hasn't halted the slide of Apple stock during the financial turmoil surrounding Wall Street. With some news stories saying that Americans are holding off on purchases, that's an obvious negative for a company with sales mostly in the discretionary spending category.
We'll see what their Q4 earnings and future outlook is.
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