[NTLK] How many Newtons were sold?

[Ryan]

I have some numbers.  I'll check in more detail, but I think it's over 300,000 lifetime.

It's roughly 60,000 per year.  About a 5 year lifespan.  Problem though is that there was so much research and development that it was still quite a financial loss even at sales of 300,000. I've also got some research and development numbers and the cost is staggering.  

After this research for my book coming out, I realized just how much money Apple poured into the Newton project, and how much money was lost on it.  This is a part of what got Apple into financial trouble.  It was partly Newton, and all the other projects like Newton but so many that didn't produce an end product.

All this together added up to a lot of money.  It's good to be innovative and risky, but the shear amount of ad hoc projects happening at Apple in the late 80s and early 90s hurt them financially.  I could go on and on, but let me check on the 300,000 and get back to everyone.

One thing I will note, unit prices vary widely because of different models and refurbished Newtons.  It's hard to come up with a total sales figure for all 5 years, but rest assured, even at $1000 per unit, at 300,000 units sold, they were still well into the red because of how expensive the R&D was.

Thank you,

Ryan