It's coming up on the fourth anniversary of the original iPhone, and thanks to a legal complaint Apple just filed against Samsung, we have a tally of shipment numbers as of March 2011 for iDevices.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/04/19/review-of-apples-unit-numbers-released-in-legal-filing-prior-to-earnings/

The breakdown:

Over 108 million iPhones

Over 60 million iPod Touches

Over 19 million iPads

If you want a Platform Warz comparison, an earlier post on Asymco used Google's Android activation numbers (note: it's not clear how representative that number really is towards unit sales, but with the hundreds of SKUs running Android, it's the best data available) to estimate 83 million shipped Android devices, and quarterly sales roughly equal to iOS. 

War has changed. Mobile wars that is, no longer will you dedicated gaming machines own the market androids and iOS are all the mobile gaming machines we'll have 5 years from now, and 10 years from now we won't even have dedicated gaming consoles.

Not sure how serious you are, but I think there's still a place for home consoles. With custom interfaces and a focus on local multiplayer, consoles can keep dominion in the living room, where PCs fear to tread.

Handhelds on the other hand... I think at best their growth will be cut off and their market will be stuck at its current size. A more likely result is that the handheld console market will dwindle and focus on catering to the most enthusiastic gamers.

I think Nintendo is already retreating upmarket with the 3DS and are focusing on crushing Sony to keep the enthusiasts rather than fight these new mobile computers for downmarket gamers. With luck and skill, they might stay profitable in handheld gaming until a new disruptive opportunity arrives.

Thats a lot of apples!

Ahem... well they have a powerful market position so these numbers don't surprise when you compare them to their overall revenue...

Yeah but how many of those iPhone/iPod sales are actually upgrades from the older models.  I doubt the install base is anywhere near 187M.

The install base for games sure isn't LOL

Well, good for Apple, still even 300m would not kill console gaming, this people buys apps, generally cheaper ones, real gaming experiences are not there, even if some big brands are having portings of some kind.

I think I read the number of people who upgraded to and iPad 2 from iPad 1 was around 25%. That means 75% were new buyers. I would guess the other devices would have a somewhat similar profile.

I actually doubt that its that low for the iPhones,  maybe the iPod though.  main reason why is there wasnt a huge difference in the 2 iPads,  thats not the case for the iPhones. 

The same is easily said of game consoles or any other consumer electronics. I myself have a broken Wii and a broken DS Lite that I've bought replacements for. The 3DS is the only console currently on sale which didn't go on the market before the iPhone launched, and these consoles are all more likely to have hardware failures because they have more moving parts than an iDevice. Furthermore, upgraded devices (including those old consoles from 2006) tend to get resold to new users, and even first generation iDevices still have value in used and refurbished markets.

Trying to parse which platforms have more devices in landfills and sock drawers is a near impossible thing to measure. It's easiest to just take for granted that moving more units means the platform is healthier.

@ Buzzi

It bugs me to see Nintendo enthusiasts, who for so long have defended their platforms of choice from accusations that their games aren't "real," turn around and start trying to dictate what constitutes a game. I thought the Wii and the DS were about open-minded inclusion, but now I see the same sneering elitism I'm used to seeing from HD gamers.

As mentioned, the same could be said of the DS or PSP or a lot of other devices. It's the nature of most consumer electronic devices.