Trillions and trillions: The iPhone revolution in dollars

If you had lots of time and money and wanted to learn about the economic impact of iPhones and Androids, you could become a 21st-century Marco Polo. But instead of following the Silk Road, you'd travel on the smartphone highway, visiting at least four continents, hundreds of cities, and the headquarters of tens of thousands of companies.

The journey might start in Africa, where raw materials for electronics are mined, then continue on to semiconductor and display screen factories in Asia, assembly plants in China and Mexico, corporate offices of giants like Apple, Samsung, Google, AT&T, and Verizon, and the locales of thousands of independent software developers throughout the globe. The value chain finally stops in the pockets and purses of more than a billion people around the world.
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Almost no one buys only a smartphone. They're likely to add protective cases, connectors, headsets, and the like. They also pay for connectivity and storage in the cloud and other places, and of course, apps. All of that probably added another $700 billion to last year's sales total, bringing the figure to about $1.5 trillion, estimates IDC's Palma.
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Applications designed for Apple's smartphones and tablets have helped create more than 627,000 U.S. jobs, while 334,000 jobs have resulted from its spending and growth, and 66,000 people work directly for the company in the United States, Apple says.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/2870793/apple-phone/how-the-iphone-sparked-a-multitrillion-dollar-revolution.html