Twice a week I indulge in what I call, the Lotto dream. For a few modest quid I can mentally masturbate on all of the things I could do with the one chance I'll ever have of knowing real money in my life. It's a harmless fantasy as long as it ends each time I discover I didn't win again, until the next time.
But my mind game titillation always gets bogged down in Euromillions figures like the sixty-million prize this week. I don't know about you but I can't my proletariat head around an amount that size. I just can't imagine it in my hot little mitts. In one job I had I was responsible for a sales target in excess of twenty-million Euros a year but the total came in twelve distinct incremental parts and was mentally manageable that way.
Anyway, when it comes to sheer magnitude, my old employer is re-defining the term, moving the goalposts and in fact taking things to an unforeseen level of ……. I don't know what! Ten years ago this year, Steve Jobs unveiled the first smartphone and the world has not been the same since. iPhone was one of several lines of technology the company had developed and was successfully selling and perhaps it was no big surprise that it took off too. But it's the scale of it that gets me.
Silicon Beat tonight predicts that Apple's revenue from iOS and iPhone will have generated $1 trillion sometime later this year in accumulated earnings since its inception. That is mind-boggling. I struggle to even imagine a billion anything, I don't know about you.
The article states that, "To some extent, Apple is spreading the wealth. Developers making apps for iOS have been paid $60 billion, and the money’s been flowing faster of late, with payments reaching $20 billion a year, according to Asymco. market-intelligence firm." This is to guys writing little program-ettes in their bedrooms for God's sake. And none of that trillion includes Mac revenues globally, iPads or iTunes or any other eyes you can think of.
Fucking staggering!!!!!