[eltoozero]

100K units in the first year, vs your king of consumer electronics today: the iPhone, which pre-sells and ships 100K units in what, several minutes?

I understand not everyone buys calculators, but that’s sort of the point of the article that this was marketed as a ‘consumer’ electronics product rather than scientific equipment.

Also there’s much less friction and much more marketing today, but it’s wild to imagine how millions of iPhones ‘move’ in a single weekend, every year for nearly the last decade and what is required to keep supply in pace with demand.

[jacquesm]

That's Moore's law in action over the longer term. A device like the iPad back when the HP-35 was introduced would have been (1) impossible to make and (2) would have cost millions of $ given the number of transistors in the device (besides the fact that the internet is what makes an iPad useful).

You really can't compare those numbers, yes, the HP was a consumer device, but the manufacturer of any consumer device back then would have been happy to sell in those numbers.

The good news is now it can be yours for under $2 if you already have an iPhone:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rpn-35-sd/id956224485?mt=8