Apple Announces More Than 1 Billion iOS Devices Sold

Apple, which on Tuesday reported the highest quarterly profit in corporate history ($18 billion) and record sales of 74.5 million iPhone units in Q4, also announced it had sold its billionth iOS device in November. The news came via Apple CEO Tim Cook during the company's earnings call.

Cook mentioned that the billionth device was sold in November - a 64GB iPhone 6 Plus. He added that the company has kept the handset in its headquarters as it marks a new milestone.

"It was truly a momentous quarter for iOS. On November 22nd we shipped our 1 billionth iOS device. It was a Space Gray 64 gigabyte iPhone 6 Plus, which we've saved here at Apple," said Tim Cook at the conference call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. Philip Schiller, the Marketing Vice President of Apple, also addressed the Apple fans on Twitter by posting "1 Billion iOS devices shipped!!".

Apart from selling 74.4 million iPhone units during the quarter, Apple also reported a jump in revenue year-on-year, growing from $57.6 billion in the same quarter last year to $74.6 billion this year. It had managed to sell 51 million iPhone handsets in the year-ago quarter.

Putting the sales numbers in perspective, are the opening weekend figures of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which together contributed up to 10 million unit sales.

The first iOS device was the first-generation iPhone launched in 2007, and the mobile operating system was then called iPhone OS. The company rebranded the operating system as iOS, licensing the IOS trademark from Cisco. Apple on Tuesday also released an update to iOS 8 - iOS 8.1.3. The latest version addressed the problem of not enough free space when installing an OTA update, with some users claiming they've been able to install the update on devices with less than 0.5GB free. Apart from this much-needed patch, iOS 8.1.3 also brings a fix for an issue that can prevent some users from entering their Apple ID password for Messages and FaceTime, while also addressing an issue that cause Spotlight to stop displaying app results.