The iPhone sales curve that could not go down

Line chart titled “iPhone — cumulative sales” showing a smooth, ever-steepening curve from 2007 to 2013, with no y-axis scale at all — Showing the misleading chart

Bar chart of iPhone unit sales per quarter, where a 47.8-million holiday peak is followed by two declining quarters of 37.4 and 31.2 million going into the September 2013 keynote — Showing the misleading chart

Be the first to star this exhibit

Apple’s 2013 keynote plotted cumulative iPhone sales — a running total that rises by construction — right as quarterly sales fell for the second straight quarter.

Apple, iPhone 5s launch keynote (via Quartz), 2013Added July 3, 2026

01The claim

iPhone sales are unstoppable — the curve gets steeper every year and never dips.

02The trick

Two moves. Plot the running total instead of per-quarter sales — a cumulative series can only rise, so even the worst quarter in company history would still nudge the line upward — then drop the y-axis scale so nobody can check the slope. On stage in September 2013 the curve looked like pure acceleration; the underlying quarters had just gone 47.8M → 37.4M → 31.2M.

03The fix

Plotted per quarter from the same SEC filings, the data has texture the running total erases: a holiday peak every winter, two sequential declines going into the keynote, and year-over-year growth that had cooled from roughly doubling in early 2012 to about 20%. The six-year rise is real and impressive — the cumulative curve just made sure no other story was tellable.