While analysts and industry observers anticipated that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphones would be commercial successes, few anticipated that the larger smartphones would be this successful. In its earnings release on January 27, Apple surprised investors by announcing that the company had sold 74.5 million iPhones in Q4 2014. This represents a new record for iPhone sales, which had never sold more than 51 million units in a quarter (Q4 2013, with the launch of the iPhone 5S). Most analysts predicted between 65 and 68 million units would be sold.

To give context, this is more units sold than in all of 2011, when the company sold 72 million iPhones. While Apple does not break out the number of iPhone 6 sales vs. that of the iPhone 6 Plus, estimates from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo are that 57.5 percent were of the iPhone 6 model and about 22 percent were of the iPhone 6 Plus, with the remaining (20.5 percent) of iPhones sold being primarily iPhone 5S models.

For accessory makers, this suggests that while it is safe to say that the iPhone 6 is worth making accessories for – not that there was much debate on the issue – accessories for older models of the iPhone can still be lucrative as well, since about 15 million older iPhones were sold in the last quarter alone.