Record iPhone and iPad sales challenge Apple detractors

Apple is on the ropes as customers flock from iOS to Android, right? Perhaps not.

The tech company last night reported record Q1 sales of 47.8m iPhones and 22.9m iPads. That’s up on last year’s sales of 37m and 15.4m respectively. That works out as over 800,000 iOS device sales per day.

Profit for the period hit a mind-boggling $13.1bn which is flat, although note that its Q1 last year contained an extra week. Revenue was up year-on-year from $46.3bn to $54.5bn.

As well as quashing rumours of slowing sales of iOS devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook also shot down talk of an imminent reveal for a large-screen iPhone, affirming: "Without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use, we’ve put a lot of thought into screen size, and we believe we’ve picked the right one."

Meanwhile, a bit of number-crunching from Business Insider suggests that the iPad Mini is eating into sales of the regular iPad. The average iPad selling price has for the first time dipped below $499 – the entry-price for full-sized iPads.

Cook admitted to investors that there has been some cannibalization” between the pair, but insisted that the lion’s share of cannibalisation is tablets stealing from Macs and PCs.