It is no exaggeration to say that the mobile phone is today an omnipresent and almost indispensable technology. And today's smartphones are the worthy heirs of a sector that started - get this - in the 1970s.
Many models of mobile phones have therefore emerged over these decades, and when we ask ourselves which one has been sold the most in the world, we intuitively lean towards the most recent ones. And yet... The Visual Capitalist site has collected all the data necessary to establish a ranking of the best-selling mobiles of all time, and in first position is placed... the Nokia 1100. Yes, with 250 million units sold in the world, the “vintage” device is ahead of all the iPhones that we thought would finish first.
What position for the iPhone?££££
Price, features and reduced size explain the success of the device, as well as its period of operation: it was sold over a period of six years before being stopped in 2009, while the very first smartphone, the iPhone which we no longer present, arrived in 2007. The iPhones are naturally present in the Top 15, with the first representative being the 'iPhone 6S/6S+ in third position.
Moreover, Nokia and Apple occupy almost the entire Top 15 best-selling mobiles of all time, with the sole exception of the Samsung E1100 in 11th position, which isn't even a smartphone. In fact, the iPhone is the only smartphone to occupy this ranking and the device has also considerably modified the trajectory of Apple, today one of the most important and admired Tech companies in the world, while Nokia has for its part fallen back into the most total modesty.
