From a friend I have at Apple, they ship new iPhones in planes for every new release to deal with the order surge. Plane cabins stacked floor to ceiling with phones. An insane quantity of phones.
Boeing 767-300 Freighter can hold a maximum payload of approximately 52.7 tons (116,200 pounds). It has a total cargo volume of about 15,469 cubic feet. That’s a lot of iPhones.
231 million iPhones were sold in 2023. They weigh about 6 ounces but round up to 10 to account for packaging. Assume that 10% of those were sold at launch. That’s 719 tons or 13 767-300 jets.
Obviously the vast majority are shipped by sea, but to handle the initial wave, they ship air.
Edit: obviously, most of those phones aren’t going to the US, but it’s still at least a few planes full.
Well an average smaller Apple Store has about $1.6 million dollars of just iPhones in inventory on a launch day and that’s just maybe 15-20 cubic feet densely packed.
Oh wait my hasty math was bad on the volume, closer to 150-200 cubic feet, allowing for the fact they are shipped in plastic totes that reduce the packing density.
I used to work in portable electronics. We had a battery vendor who wanted to overnight us some samples (like 100mAh cells).
To get them on the plane, they just bought a My Neighbor Totoro night light, popped it open, and shoved the battery inside. They didn’t even tell us they were going to do that.
hrm, that makes sense. I wonder if you could transport a bunch of batteries by shipping an Uninterruptible Power Supply with a huge array of Li-Ion batteries inside. they’d have protection circuitry and they’d be contained within the chassis, so seems like you should?
“What, are you scared of my widdle duffel bag full of assorted raw lithium cells I scavenged from old laptops?”
I actually used to have a box of 500 18650 cells that I recovered from old laptops, and that box terrified me. They were all inspected for damage and were nearly stacked in little plastic compartments,but if one had decided to go off, it would have burned my house down.
Check out www.batteryhookup.com for a good time. I bought a few dozen unused modem backup batteries there for $50 and shucked enough 18650s out of them to build a new ebike battery.
It’s totally fine in the US. Almost every passenger on the plane comes equipped with their own batteries in their pocket to take out any bad batteries should the need arise. One could say that domestic flights are only safe these days because everyone carries a battery or two with them.
Yeah that’s just basic international air freight. It’s not like apple is being special. They bid on pallet locations just pike everyone else, difference is is that they just wreck anyone other potential bidder during new phone releases
From a friend I have at Apple, they ship new iPhones in planes for every new release to deal with the order surge. Plane cabins stacked floor to ceiling with phones. An insane quantity of phones.
So this is why they’re all in Airplane mode when they’re brand new? TIL
Boeing 767-300 Freighter can hold a maximum payload of approximately 52.7 tons (116,200 pounds). It has a total cargo volume of about 15,469 cubic feet. That’s a lot of iPhones.
231 million iPhones were sold in 2023. They weigh about 6 ounces but round up to 10 to account for packaging. Assume that 10% of those were sold at launch. That’s 719 tons or 13 767-300 jets.
Obviously the vast majority are shipped by sea, but to handle the initial wave, they ship air.
Edit: obviously, most of those phones aren’t going to the US, but it’s still at least a few planes full.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/
Well an average smaller Apple Store has about $1.6 million dollars of just iPhones in inventory on a launch day and that’s just maybe 15-20 cubic feet densely packed.
Oh wait my hasty math was bad on the volume, closer to 150-200 cubic feet, allowing for the fact they are shipped in plastic totes that reduce the packing density.
isn’t it dangerous to pack a plane full of lithium ion batteries? it didn’t go so well for UPS 006.
No. They’re all contained with protection circuitry. Unprotected cells have different requirements.
This person works in the battery industry. Hello fellow battery expert!
I used to work in portable electronics. We had a battery vendor who wanted to overnight us some samples (like 100mAh cells).
To get them on the plane, they just bought a My Neighbor Totoro night light, popped it open, and shoved the battery inside. They didn’t even tell us they were going to do that.
Sometimes it’s a lot easier to skirt laws than explain why they’re wrong.
Yeah plus, y’know… free night light.
hrm, that makes sense. I wonder if you could transport a bunch of batteries by shipping an Uninterruptible Power Supply with a huge array of Li-Ion batteries inside. they’d have protection circuitry and they’d be contained within the chassis, so seems like you should?
“What, are you scared of my widdle duffel bag full of assorted raw lithium cells I scavenged from old laptops?”
I actually used to have a box of 500 18650 cells that I recovered from old laptops, and that box terrified me. They were all inspected for damage and were nearly stacked in little plastic compartments,but if one had decided to go off, it would have burned my house down.
Check out www.batteryhookup.com for a good time. I bought a few dozen unused modem backup batteries there for $50 and shucked enough 18650s out of them to build a new ebike battery.
It’s totally fine in the US. Almost every passenger on the plane comes equipped with their own batteries in their pocket to take out any bad batteries should the need arise. One could say that domestic flights are only safe these days because everyone carries a battery or two with them.
Yeah that’s just basic international air freight. It’s not like apple is being special. They bid on pallet locations just pike everyone else, difference is is that they just wreck anyone other potential bidder during new phone releases