“Apple’s heavily promoted iPhone ended 2007 as what one analyst calls the fastest-growing consumer electronics product ever.” – from USA Today.

The “one analyst” (according to USA Today) is Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group, who pegs iPhone sales at end of December as somewhere around 3 million units and claims that Apple selling a million iPhones between June 29 and Sept 10 constitutes the best showing for any consumer electronics product ever. He also points out that Apple’s share of the cellphone market now exceeds that of phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS.

I’m pleased that Apple is having such a roaring success with the iPhone and I expect that Apple’s sales figures for the holiday quarter (to be announced on 22nd January) will blow away Apple CFO’s $9.2 billion projection. I am, let’s face it, a bit of an Apple fan – in possession of an iMac, a Mac Pro and MacBook Pro plus the odd iPod. But let’s not support a very dubious claim for that reason.

The iPhone is not the fastest-growing consumer electronics product ever, the Nintendo Wii is. (I’m not a Wii owner by the way, I would be, but I can’t lay my hands on one). The Wii has generated unparalleled demand – that still goes unsatisfied after more than one year. I’ve done a comparison of these two stellar products before (click here to read) and it’s still valid. The Wii is more of a phenomenon that the iPhone.

Financial analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray expects that iPhone sales will exceed 12 million by the end of 2008 – 2 million more than Apple projected. That may be so, but if so that’s significantly less in about 18 months than the 13 million plus Wiis that Nintendo sold in less than a year (figures up to September 2007). Now you can argue whether this amounts to a fair comparison, but whichever way you look at it, the Wii turns up with a more attractive figure.