Apple has sold 700M iPhones, sees 49% quarterly sales growth year over year

At its Spring Forward event today in San Francisco, Apple announced it has now sold 700 million iPhones to date, almost 75 million of them in the last quarter. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that iPhone sales have grown 49 percent year over year.

That growth number is for the previous quarter (the company’s financial Q1 2015 versus Q1 2014). Cook compared it to the rest of the industry, which he pegged at having grown only 26 percent. That’s almost double. “The iPhone is growing stronger than ever,” Cook declared.

These numbers shouldn’t be much of a surprise. In its last quarter, Apple broke its own iPhone sales records, selling 74.5 million iPhones in Q1 2015.

Apple’s moves in China undoubtedly helped fuel iPhone growth — a report earlier this year estimated it shipped more smartphones than any other company in the country last quarter. Furthermore, a U.S. study found iPhones accounted for half of all new smartphone activations in the same quarter.

Yet the number Apple is most proud of, Cook claimed, is that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have a 99 percent customer satisfaction rate. That’s definitely a high number, though it is easier to dispute than cold, hard sales figures.

Apple has of course enjoyed a very high satisfaction rating with its iPhone for many years, though whether it is indeed 99 percent is debatable. As is typical for Apple presentations, the company didn’t share the study that it is referencing.

Some studies over the years have shown that iPhone satisfaction has dropped. Yet the biggest complaint was that the iPhone isn’t as big as many of its Android counterparts. With the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, that downside is now gone.

In short, Apple continues to sell more and more iPhones. This is impressive, especially given the increased competition from Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Xiaomi, LG, and the growing number of smartphone makers.