Let's go with a more meaningful statement:

"The growth of our services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices,"

This was reported by Apple in January 2016. The number included Macs, Watches, iPads and iPhones.

I'll be generous and say Macs and Watchs amount to 200-300 millions active devices (they really don't). That means there were 700-800 millions ACTIVE iOS devices in January 2016.

By the end of 2016 Apple will have sold around 200 million in 2016, add that to the number of active devices number we got in January, and you will have around 900 millions active iOS devices. It can be a billion active iOS devices but let's go with the lower estimates. I am not gonna even bother and include the iPad sales.

Weeks after iOS 10 release, 60% of the userbase upgraded to it. The number NOW is naturally higher because iOS 10 was released months ago and every iPhone 7 sold ships with iOS 10 pre-installed. Why is iOS 10 important in this discusion? because there is no jailbreak for it, no jailbreak = no piracy. One can safely assume that 60-70% of the active install base are using iOS 10 and don't have the option to pirate in the first place.

I've seen somewhere that it will use 75MB per hour. It's not that much but I don't think that it is a good idea for mobile games to require internet connection.

According to Apple there were more than 1 billion Apple devices in active use in January.

They sold a lot more: 1033 million iPhone until September + 318 million iPads until September + more than 100 million iPod touch devices + the iOS devices of this quarter. Even if we ditch the 200 million iOS devices prior to 2012, more than 1.2 billion iOS devices were sold in the last 5 years.

I did a quick search and found some figures from a Cook keynote a little over a year ago, that Apple had sold until then, 500million Iphones, 200 million Ipads, 100 million Ipod touches (and 80 million Macs), which makes me wonder what the active device means. Of course, I have no clue how many Apple watches they have sold, but I'm doubtful anyone who owns a Mac, an Ipad, an Iphone and Apple watch (or a combination) is going to (or need to) pay separately for the software on every device (then again, if it's Apple and it's fanboys in question). On Android you'd need to pay only once for the software to access it on all your devices, don't know if works the same way on Apple devices.

The thing is though, this is using a metric of how many pieces of hardware out there can potentially run a game, but also however a great % of these devices are owned by people who will never, Ever, Ever, ever... ever, use them for a video game. Using the number of devices which are currently active as your potential customer base for video game sales would be the same as attempting to suggest that every PC in the world is a potential customer for a low end indie title on Steam, Sure each PC could potentially play the software, does that mean the owner of the PC will play it? no of course it doesn't.

Thats bs.. its on the phone itself..  it will only use very litle.. like 1 mb every hour.. max

Ontopic.. Forget the ones that dont buy games.. why should we talk about thoose loosers.. what matters is the ones that does.. and acording to many analytic.. record many will bye Super Mario Run

Super Mario Run is right aorund the corner. I went to the NYC event where Miyamoto debuted it and I played it. I'm older so I wans't floored by its "newness" especially since aesthetically it is anything but new, but it was solid fun and without a doubt of the high teir class of iOS games, of which there are not many.

So, how does Nintendo handle it? It is online only to prevent piracy. Here is the defense we hear:

• SMR is a higher-quality mobile game with higher production costs than average mobile games
• SMR offers no in-app purchases or ads, and therefore 100% of their profit comes from the single intitial purchase of the game
• iOS has upwards of 60% piracy rate (Android has 95%)
• SMR is $10 (ten times more expensive than the average mobile game), logically it is far more likely to be pirated.
• Nintendo as a company has [likely] been greatly hurt by piracy in the past, specifically with regards to their portable platforms

75mb per hour was reported by appleinsider. We'll see if that's true.

75mb per hour was reported by appleinsider. We'll see if that's true.

The internet connection requirement is bad not because some people won't be able to pirate the game but because it is unknown what will happen if you get disconnected. If it will throw you out of the game then it's bad. For example I play mobile games and handheld games mostly in the subway where internet connection can be lost between stations. Will I be able to play this game without being interrupted every time I lose a signal?