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Puzzling estimation question

interviewer led New
Recent activity on Oct 28, 2018
1 Answer
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Emad
Certified
asked on Oct 28, 2018

at a final round interview, I was asked to assume that Apple is just about to launch iPhone X & the cheaper iPhone XR. The main question was to come up with an estimate of the number of units sold of both iPhone X & iPhone XR during the launching quarter. I was given 10 minutes and told I could use the internet and told explicitly I should not use any approach that started with the world population.

what approach should I have used?

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Vlad
Expert
 replied on Oct 28, 2018
McKinsey / Accenture Alum / Got all BIG3 offers / Harvard Business School

Hi,

You could use the following data:

  • iPhone sales in the previous launches
  • Similar recent flagship phones sales
  • # of iPhone users and iPhone replacement rate (1/lifetime of an iphone)

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