No these aren't three of the numbers I will be playing for the 155M Megamillions jackpot Friday. They are related to the iPhone and the impact it has had in the mobile space. Apple has sold 21 million iPhones since debuting it less than two years ago. Additionally, over thirty-six thousand applications have been developed for the iPhone and currently reside in the iTunes store. And very soon iPhone and iTouch owners will have downloaded over one billion applications in just nine months time.
All three numbers pretty astonishing considering the fact that Apple hadn't been in the phone business prior to the iPhone introduction. If they continue to stay focussed on the mobile space, and I am assuming they will due to the profitability of the hardware and App Store in iTunes, the innovations over the next couple of years should be equally extraordinary.
One of the things I have admired about Apple and their products is ease of use. Out of the box they just plain work. To me they feel more like an appliance than a computer, phone, software, etc. This is especially true for the iPhone and the application base available for download. I currently have fifty-eight application's on my iPhone, and the majority of them were found and downloaded via the phone, typically in less than a minute per application and all worked right away. No re-booting the system, agreeing to software licenses, etc. for each downloaded application.
Now let's hope that AT&T can get their act together and develop a faster and more reliable network to take advantage of the new generation of video applications soon to hit the App Store.