I get lots of e-readers at my site. In fact, I get just as many Kindles as I do Android tablets like the Galaxy. So in my experience (with a real website that is 100% free of any iOS or Android content), your argument that people with e-readers and an iPAd will pick up the iPad.
So you're agreeing with me that the entire basis of the article... the Net App statistics which (alone out of all web stats) supposedly call into question IDC's sales figures... are wrong?
Because they're the same source which also claims that Kindle Fires are less than 1% of mobile web accesses, and are seen thirty times less than other Android tablet browsers. I was just quoting the same source the articles used. See their chart below.
So either I'm right and the article is based on stats that include millions of e-Readers which don't surf the web, or you're right and the article is based on stats that are bogus in your experience. Either way, the article is based on suspect info.
<span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">So you're agreeing with me that the entire basis of the article... the Net App statistics which (alone out of all web stats) supposedly call into question IDC's sales figures... are wrong</span>
<span style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;">?</span>
Because they're the same source which also claims that Kindle Fires are less than 1% of mobile web accesses, and are seen thirty times less than other Android tablet browsers. I was just quoting the same source the articles used. See their chart below.
So either I'm right and the article is based on stats that include millions of e-Readers which don't surf the web, or you're right and the article is based on stats that are bogus in your experience. Either way, the article is based on suspect info.
Or of course, we could all be wrong <img alt="1wink.gif" id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359856439779_1050" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies/1wink.gif" style="font-size:13px;line-height:1.231;" name="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359856439779_1050">
Nice to see that you posted the graph to which I was referring before, which nullifies your prior ramblings.
1. It has about the same relevance as your first question.
2. Ha ha.
3. You don't understand much about financial reporting, so best to not sound off. You obviously didn't read or understand the article. Or, it's likely that you wouldn't have understood it even if you read it.
1. Nope, mine was relevant, and it still hasn't been answered.
2. What? You find a fact funny? That explains a lot I suppose.
3. What I understand is what Apple documented in their financial reports, maybe you should read them
As for Android feature phones, the answer is the same as the last ten times you asked the question and I provided multiple examples. I'm tired of looking it up for you and providing the answer since you're simply going to ignore it, anyway. Google 'android feature phone' and look at the results. There are many phones being sold that the manufacturer calls a feature phone - and that's a pretty good definition (especially since, if anything, they're going to want to call the borderline phones 'smartphones' if they can get away with it).
[/quote
I have never seen you reponse 10 times (I haven't asked 10 times, so I don't know why you would reply 10 times).
If you are going to state something as fact, back it up, otherwise it is basically rubbish. Now list why you can't call these android based phones as smartphones.
I googled as you requested, all that was returned was lists of features of Android phones. If the phones meet the definition of a smartphone, guess what, that makes them a smartphone. You said "There are many phones being sold that the manufacturer calls a feature phone", please list these "many phones"
Are you Android shills so totally incapable of using a search engine? Do it without the quotes. There are 56,000,000 hits on Bing. Many of them are exactly what I've said they are.
I bet you feel real tough calling people shills
/quote]
There's nothing questionable here. The MAJORITY of Android phones are cheap laggy shitty sub $100 phones (no contract) that are excruciatingly slow. They can never be used to surf the web or download any app.
1. Nope, mine was relevant, and it still hasn't been answered.
2. What? You find a fact funny? That explains a lot I suppose.
3. What I understand is what Apple documented in their financial reports, maybe you should read them
1. Of course you would think so. Lol.
2. An assertion is not a fact.
3. Perhaps you should understand the phrase 'channel inventory', what the article says about that, and might wonder why no one other than Apple provides that information.
You're just sounding like a paid shill at this point. That's your wont, but I wish you'd stop polluting these boards.
Let me offer another perspective. Many of these iOS vs. Android web stats are very unreliable. I'm not sure how NetMarketShare.com determines if something is Android. I do know that Akamai and Piwik both seriously botch device detection (Akamai counts several Android browsers as their desktop versions, and Piwik counts them as Safari). Apparently folks have difficulty writing working regex's for User Agent Strings.
This same User Agent string brokenness extends to web sites themselves. Far too many of them will give you the phone version of their site if they match "Android" in the browser string, regardless if you're using a phone or a tablet. This isn't too much of a problem on a 7" tablet in portrait mode, but it's a major problem on 10" tablets in landscape mode. Any site using WordPress' WPTouch plugin shows this behavior. Many web admins are fairly unresponsive to requests to fix their UA sniffing. Personally, I encounter this situation so often that I have a canned email I send asking admins to change their sites and providing reference documentation.
As you can imagine, it's really frustrating to get jumbo-size phone sites on 10" tablets. So many Android users just stop browsing the web on them or install a third-party browser that fakes a desktop User Agent string. Both of these will skew the stats.
So it has nothing to do with Android users being stupid or poor, or the devices being junky. It's very often a lack of attention to detail by sysadmins.
For reference: You can distinguish between an Android phone and a tablet by checking for the "Mobile" keyword in the User Agent string and redirecting to the mobile site only if it's present. This will work for the stock browser (and embedded WebViews), Chrome, and Firefox.
There's nothing questionable here. The MAJORITY of Android phones are cheap laggy shitty sub $100 phones (no contract) that are excruciatingly slow. They can never be used to surf the web or download any app.
Okay, you're saying that the sales figures are correct, and it's just the surfing is different.. so the thread's main article is wrong? Look folks, we have to keep things straight. The two main theories are based on:
SALES - This thread's base article was based on the assumption that Android and iOS devices would have similar web usage, and therefore a large web usage difference must be evidence that the sales figures were incorrect: "The fact that iOS is more than twice as popular on the web as all Android devices combined calls into question market statistics by research firms such as IDC..."
(The article also conflates overall smartphone and tablet web usage, yet the IDC figures were only about tablets.)
WEB USAGE - Other posters like this one are saying that it's actually Android and iOS web usage that's radically different (which was the most recent claim of fansite articles before this one), not the sales figures.
Either one assumption is wrong, or more likely, there's a combination factor here that all the opinions so far are missing.
Everyone might want to read the reports that were used as the basis for this article. (Some here have asked questions like "How do you know how many e-Readers were sold", which is answered in those sources.)
01/31 - Here is the original IDC report, with its estimated WORLD tablet sales.
01/31 - Here is the CNN article which talked about the IDC report.
02/01 - Here is the second CNN article, referencing the Net Applications web report.
02/01 - Here is this thread's article, using the second CNN article as its source.
Re: User Agent Strings. There's also the fact that the Silk server-assisted browser used by the Kindle Fire looks very similar to the one for a desktop running Safari 5.0. Who knows if those are being counted correctly (if they're not, for example, then that would blow my theory about Fires not being used for surfing, but would explain their low web usage count.)
There's a lot of missing and/or bad data and assumptions, for sure.
Okay, you're saying that the sales figures are correct, and it's just the surfing is different.. ....... blah blah...... There's a lot of missing and/or bad data and assumptions, for sure......
.... a problem which would be solved in one stroke if Android manufacturers put out sales and channel inventory numbers! And if Google would start reporting segment data for its Android-related revenue.
You Androiders keep avoiding the question: why do you think they keep avoiding the opportunity to shed light on something so simple, considering the news on market share for them, according to you all, is so good!?
.... a problem which would be solved in one stroke if Android manufacturers put out sales and channel inventory numbers! And if Google would start reporting segment data for its Android-related revenue.
You Androiders keep avoiding the question: why do you think they keep avoiding the opportunity to shed light on something so simple, considering the news on market share for them, according to you all, is so good!?
From all 500+ licensed Android product manufacturers??
Some with varying reporting periods and perhaps different methods of tracking channel inventory if they do so at all? And someone, who I assume you think should be Google, is tasked with aggregating each of the 500+ licensee manufacturing numbers collected on some specific day, then gather inventory channel numbers for hundreds (thousands?) of products numbers at thousands of distribution outlets as of that day too, somehow convincing them Google should have access to their business inventory. Easy-peesy.
From all 500+ licensed Android product manufacturers??
Some with varying reporting periods and perhaps different methods of tracking channel inventory if they do so at all? And someone, who I assume you think should be Google, is tasked with aggregating each of the 500+ licensee manufacturing numbers collected on some specific day, then gather inventory channel numbers for hundreds (thousands?) of products numbers at thousands of distribution outlets as of that day too, somehow convincing them Google should have access to their business inventory. Easy-peesy.
So you're kidding, right, just forgot the /s tag?
Why am I not surprised at this comment.
Only in your peculiar way of thinking would you not see that the top four or five -- Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, Amazon -- would suffice.
Heck, I'd take just Samsung's numbers, since they're supposedly the most successful according to all sorts of guesstimates!
my brother bought 3 android tablet for the kids at christmas (decision price based). 2 are now goosed, very, very sub standard charging connections have given up only 2 months later. kids plugging them in and out 10 times a day will always end up with bent pins etc. And they had to plugged in so often as the battery life was dreadful.
In relation to the story, the kids only us the tablets for games apps ( when they actually work, loads will install and not run) and a small bit of supervised youtube. I would imagine that this is a similar in many households.
And now its only 1/3 of the devices in operation, while the other 2 are returned.
95% of adults I know will opt for getting an iOS device as they have the money for it, but cant justify spending %u20AC300 on kids toys. So most real surfing done by them in my view.
Only in your peculiar way of thinking would you not see that the top four or five -- Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, Amazon -- would suffice.
Heck, I'd take just Samsung's numbers, since they're supposedly the most successful according to all sorts of guesstimates!
So if you were to guess, how many retailers, service providers and/or distributors over dozens of countries would have to coordinate and report their current inventory to each applicable manufacturer (Samsung, Huawai, etc.) as of a specific day, who would than report those to Google combined with their shipped numbers for a few hundred unique devices at that same specific point in time to satisfy your curiosity? 5 thousand? 10 thousand? More? And they go to that effort why?
Either you're not serious or you're simply not thinking today IMO. Why isn't a report of unique device activations plenty close, particularly since you've said you don't really care if every device is counted as long as the biggest 4 or 5 report channel numbers.
EDIT: Here's the list of Samsung authorized resellers.. . in just the US!:
.... a problem which would be solved in one stroke if Android manufacturers put out sales and channel inventory numbers! And if Google would start reporting segment data for its Android-related revenue.
You Androiders keep avoiding the question: why do you think they keep avoiding the opportunity to shed light on something so simple, considering the news on market share for them, according to you all, is so good!?
From all 500+ licensed Android product manufacturers??
Some with varying reporting periods and perhaps different methods of tracking channel inventory if they do so at all? And someone, who I assume you think should be Google, is tasked with aggregating each of the 500+ licensee manufacturing numbers collected on some specific day, then gather inventory channel numbers for hundreds (thousands?) of products numbers at thousands of distribution outlets as of that day too, somehow convincing them Google should have access to their business inventory. Easy-peesy.
So if you were to guess, how many retailers, service providers and/or distributors over dozens of countries would have to coordinate and report their current inventory to each applicable manufacturer (Samsung, Huawai, etc.) as of a specific day, who would than report those to Google combined with their shipped numbers for a few hundred unique devices at that same specific point in time to satisfy your curiosity? 5 thousand? 10 thousand? More? And they go to that effort why?
Either you're not serious or you're simply not thinking today IMO. Why isn't a report of unique device activations plenty close, particularly since you've said you don't really care if every device is counted as long as the biggest 4 or 5 report channel numbers.
<p id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359922875042_910" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18.1875px;">EDIT: Here's the list of Samsung authorized resellers.. . in just the US!:</p>
<p id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359922875042_906" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18.1875px;"><a href="http://www.samsung.com/us/peaceofmind/authorized_resellers.html" id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359922875042_905" style="color:rgb(204,102,0);border:0px;" target="_blank" name="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1359922875042_905">http://www.samsung.com/us/peaceofmind/authorized_resellers.html</a>;
</p>
Samsung somehow figured out that they sold 100 million Galaxy S series phones over the last 30 months... Link
But they can't tell us how many phones they sell in a single quarter? :no:
That's bullcrap. Samsung is a multi-billion dollar electronics corporation. They know EXACTLY how many units they produce, ship and sell. And I'm not one of those people who thinks Samsung phones just sit in a warehouse. They are reaching customers in record numbers.
But they must be keeping that information a secret for a reason.
MY THEORY: Samsung only officially reports sales of their flagship Galaxy S series... because they are afraid to report that their best selling phones across the globe are actually crappy $80 phones.
"We've sold 100 million flagship phones" makes a better headline than "we've sold 300 million garbage phones"
MY THEORY: Samsung only officially reports sales of their flagship Galaxy S series... because they are afraid to report that their best selling phones across the globe are actually crappy $80 phones.
"We've sold 100 million flagship phones" makes a better headline than "we've sold 300 million garbage phones"
That's no different than Apple lumping all it's iPhone sales together regardless of model is it? But you could absolutely be correct that Samsung would prefer as a rule not to break out sales by specific model so as not to reveal too much to competitors. Who does?
That's no different than Apple lumping all it's iPhone sales together regardless of model is it? But you could absolutely be correct that Samsung would prefer as a rule not to break out sales by specific model so as not to reveal too much to competitors. Who does?
And iPad sales, iPod sales, Mac sales. No breakdown of specific models.
That's no different than Apple lumping all it's iPhone sales together regardless of model is it? But you could absolutely be correct that Samsung would prefer as a rule not to break out sales by specific model so as not to reveal too much to competitors. Who does?
Very true. But the difference is... Apple does give out official numbers... for all their phones (not just a certain subset of phones)... every single quarter. Sure they're not broken down by individual model... but some could argue that the numbers for "the iPhone" are good enough. Apple has a very lean product line... only offering 3 models from mid to high-end.
Samsung, on the other hand, is a full-line smartphone manufacturer. They sell budget phones all the way up to high-end. Yet all we get from Samsung are a few "milestones" every so often about their flagship phones. Their only official statement on the matter is a cumulative total of one series of phones that dates back to 2010. It makes a great headline... but offers no information about the strength of their product line.
I understand the need for corporate secrecy... but I'd like some transparency.
Samsung's announcement of 100 million Galaxy S over 30 months is nice... but what about the other phones Samsung sold over the last 30 months? Or just the last 3 months?
Samsung's recent report also says that the Galaxy SIII sold 40 million in 7 months... with average daily sales of about 190,000 units.
That would be 18 million Galaxy SIII in a quarter... while analysts are pegging Samsung at 60 million total smartphones for the quarter.
So what were the other 42 million Samsung smartphones?
Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note II might make up 1/3 of Samsung's sales... but what on Earth makes up the rest? Are they not proud of those sales?
That's no different than Apple lumping all it's iPhone sales together regardless of model is it? But you could absolutely be correct that Samsung would prefer as a rule not to break out sales by specific model so as not to reveal too much to competitors. Who does?
Yeah, Apple must have a tiny share of the profit share, that's why they must be coy about the product mix. /s
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee
I get lots of e-readers at my site. In fact, I get just as many Kindles as I do Android tablets like the Galaxy. So in my experience (with a real website that is 100% free of any iOS or Android content), your argument that people with e-readers and an iPAd will pick up the iPad.
So you're agreeing with me that the entire basis of the article... the Net App statistics which (alone out of all web stats) supposedly call into question IDC's sales figures... are wrong?
Because they're the same source which also claims that Kindle Fires are less than 1% of mobile web accesses, and are seen thirty times less than other Android tablet browsers. I was just quoting the same source the articles used. See their chart below.
So either I'm right and the article is based on stats that include millions of e-Readers which don't surf the web, or you're right and the article is based on stats that are bogus in your experience. Either way, the article is based on suspect info.
Or of course, we could all be wrong
Nice to see that you posted the graph to which I was referring before, which nullifies your prior ramblings.
1. Nope, mine was relevant, and it still hasn't been answered.
2. What? You find a fact funny? That explains a lot I suppose.
3. What I understand is what Apple documented in their financial reports, maybe you should read them
Nope, I have never seen a BOGO cellphone deal. Like 96% of the worlds population, I do no live in the US.
I bet you feel real tough calling people shills
/quote]
I can use one, and I didn't use quote marks
Did you read the title of that articule? Do you know what the word "might" means?
There's nothing questionable here. The MAJORITY of Android phones are cheap laggy shitty sub $100 phones (no contract) that are excruciatingly slow. They can never be used to surf the web or download any app.
1. Of course you would think so. Lol.
2. An assertion is not a fact.
3. Perhaps you should understand the phrase 'channel inventory', what the article says about that, and might wonder why no one other than Apple provides that information.
You're just sounding like a paid shill at this point. That's your wont, but I wish you'd stop polluting these boards.
Let me offer another perspective. Many of these iOS vs. Android web stats are very unreliable. I'm not sure how NetMarketShare.com determines if something is Android. I do know that Akamai and Piwik both seriously botch device detection (Akamai counts several Android browsers as their desktop versions, and Piwik counts them as Safari). Apparently folks have difficulty writing working regex's for User Agent Strings.
This same User Agent string brokenness extends to web sites themselves. Far too many of them will give you the phone version of their site if they match "Android" in the browser string, regardless if you're using a phone or a tablet. This isn't too much of a problem on a 7" tablet in portrait mode, but it's a major problem on 10" tablets in landscape mode. Any site using WordPress' WPTouch plugin shows this behavior. Many web admins are fairly unresponsive to requests to fix their UA sniffing. Personally, I encounter this situation so often that I have a canned email I send asking admins to change their sites and providing reference documentation.
As you can imagine, it's really frustrating to get jumbo-size phone sites on 10" tablets. So many Android users just stop browsing the web on them or install a third-party browser that fakes a desktop User Agent string. Both of these will skew the stats.
So it has nothing to do with Android users being stupid or poor, or the devices being junky. It's very often a lack of attention to detail by sysadmins.
For reference: You can distinguish between an Android phone and a tablet by checking for the "Mobile" keyword in the User Agent string and redirecting to the mobile site only if it's present. This will work for the stock browser (and embedded WebViews), Chrome, and Firefox.
Stock Android Browser: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/android-browser-user-agent-issues.html
Chrome for Android: https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/user-agent
Firefox for Android: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_user_agent_string_reference#Android
Quote:
Originally Posted by xtacee1990
There's nothing questionable here. The MAJORITY of Android phones are cheap laggy shitty sub $100 phones (no contract) that are excruciatingly slow. They can never be used to surf the web or download any app.
Okay, you're saying that the sales figures are correct, and it's just the surfing is different.. so the thread's main article is wrong? Look folks, we have to keep things straight. The two main theories are based on:
SALES - This thread's base article was based on the assumption that Android and iOS devices would have similar web usage, and therefore a large web usage difference must be evidence that the sales figures were incorrect: "The fact that iOS is more than twice as popular on the web as all Android devices combined calls into question market statistics by research firms such as IDC..."
(The article also conflates overall smartphone and tablet web usage, yet the IDC figures were only about tablets.)
WEB USAGE - Other posters like this one are saying that it's actually Android and iOS web usage that's radically different (which was the most recent claim of fansite articles before this one), not the sales figures.
Either one assumption is wrong, or more likely, there's a combination factor here that all the opinions so far are missing.
Everyone might want to read the reports that were used as the basis for this article. (Some here have asked questions like "How do you know how many e-Readers were sold", which is answered in those sources.)
01/31 - Here is the original IDC report, with its estimated WORLD tablet sales.
01/31 - Here is the CNN article which talked about the IDC report.
02/01 - Here is the second CNN article, referencing the Net Applications web report.
02/01 - Here is this thread's article, using the second CNN article as its source.
Re: User Agent Strings. There's also the fact that the Silk server-assisted browser used by the Kindle Fire looks very similar to the one for a desktop running Safari 5.0. Who knows if those are being counted correctly (if they're not, for example, then that would blow my theory about Fires not being used for surfing, but would explain their low web usage count.)
There's a lot of missing and/or bad data and assumptions, for sure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
Okay, you're saying that the sales figures are correct, and it's just the surfing is different.. ....... blah blah...... There's a lot of missing and/or bad data and assumptions, for sure......
.... a problem which would be solved in one stroke if Android manufacturers put out sales and channel inventory numbers! And if Google would start reporting segment data for its Android-related revenue.
You Androiders keep avoiding the question: why do you think they keep avoiding the opportunity to shed light on something so simple, considering the news on market share for them, according to you all, is so good!?
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
.... a problem which would be solved in one stroke if Android manufacturers put out sales and channel inventory numbers! And if Google would start reporting segment data for its Android-related revenue.
You Androiders keep avoiding the question: why do you think they keep avoiding the opportunity to shed light on something so simple, considering the news on market share for them, according to you all, is so good!?
From all 500+ licensed Android product manufacturers??
Some with varying reporting periods and perhaps different methods of tracking channel inventory if they do so at all? And someone, who I assume you think should be Google, is tasked with aggregating each of the 500+ licensee manufacturing numbers collected on some specific day, then gather inventory channel numbers for hundreds (thousands?) of products numbers at thousands of distribution outlets as of that day too, somehow convincing them Google should have access to their business inventory. Easy-peesy.
So you're kidding, right, just forgot the /s tag?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
From all 500+ licensed Android product manufacturers??
Some with varying reporting periods and perhaps different methods of tracking channel inventory if they do so at all? And someone, who I assume you think should be Google, is tasked with aggregating each of the 500+ licensee manufacturing numbers collected on some specific day, then gather inventory channel numbers for hundreds (thousands?) of products numbers at thousands of distribution outlets as of that day too, somehow convincing them Google should have access to their business inventory. Easy-peesy.
So you're kidding, right, just forgot the /s tag?
Why am I not surprised at this comment.
Only in your peculiar way of thinking would you not see that the top four or five -- Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, Amazon -- would suffice.
Heck, I'd take just Samsung's numbers, since they're supposedly the most successful according to all sorts of guesstimates!
In relation to the story, the kids only us the tablets for games apps ( when they actually work, loads will install and not run) and a small bit of supervised youtube. I would imagine that this is a similar in many households.
And now its only 1/3 of the devices in operation, while the other 2 are returned.
95% of adults I know will opt for getting an iOS device as they have the money for it, but cant justify spending %u20AC300 on kids toys. So most real surfing done by them in my view.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Why am I not surprised at this comment.
Only in your peculiar way of thinking would you not see that the top four or five -- Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, Amazon -- would suffice.
Heck, I'd take just Samsung's numbers, since they're supposedly the most successful according to all sorts of guesstimates!
So if you were to guess, how many retailers, service providers and/or distributors over dozens of countries would have to coordinate and report their current inventory to each applicable manufacturer (Samsung, Huawai, etc.) as of a specific day, who would than report those to Google combined with their shipped numbers for a few hundred unique devices at that same specific point in time to satisfy your curiosity? 5 thousand? 10 thousand? More? And they go to that effort why?
Either you're not serious or you're simply not thinking today IMO. Why isn't a report of unique device activations plenty close, particularly since you've said you don't really care if every device is counted as long as the biggest 4 or 5 report channel numbers.
EDIT: Here's the list of Samsung authorized resellers.. . in just the US!:
http://www.samsung.com/us/peaceofmind/authorized_resellers.html
duplicate
Samsung somehow figured out that they sold 100 million Galaxy S series phones over the last 30 months... Link
But they can't tell us how many phones they sell in a single quarter? :no:
That's bullcrap. Samsung is a multi-billion dollar electronics corporation. They know EXACTLY how many units they produce, ship and sell. And I'm not one of those people who thinks Samsung phones just sit in a warehouse. They are reaching customers in record numbers.
But they must be keeping that information a secret for a reason.
MY THEORY: Samsung only officially reports sales of their flagship Galaxy S series... because they are afraid to report that their best selling phones across the globe are actually crappy $80 phones.
"We've sold 100 million flagship phones" makes a better headline than "we've sold 300 million garbage phones"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Scrip
MY THEORY: Samsung only officially reports sales of their flagship Galaxy S series... because they are afraid to report that their best selling phones across the globe are actually crappy $80 phones.
"We've sold 100 million flagship phones" makes a better headline than "we've sold 300 million garbage phones"
That's no different than Apple lumping all it's iPhone sales together regardless of model is it? But you could absolutely be correct that Samsung would prefer as a rule not to break out sales by specific model so as not to reveal too much to competitors. Who does?
And iPad sales, iPod sales, Mac sales. No breakdown of specific models.
Very true. But the difference is... Apple does give out official numbers... for all their phones (not just a certain subset of phones)... every single quarter. Sure they're not broken down by individual model... but some could argue that the numbers for "the iPhone" are good enough. Apple has a very lean product line... only offering 3 models from mid to high-end.
Samsung, on the other hand, is a full-line smartphone manufacturer. They sell budget phones all the way up to high-end. Yet all we get from Samsung are a few "milestones" every so often about their flagship phones. Their only official statement on the matter is a cumulative total of one series of phones that dates back to 2010. It makes a great headline... but offers no information about the strength of their product line.
I understand the need for corporate secrecy... but I'd like some transparency.
Samsung's announcement of 100 million Galaxy S over 30 months is nice... but what about the other phones Samsung sold over the last 30 months? Or just the last 3 months?
Samsung's recent report also says that the Galaxy SIII sold 40 million in 7 months... with average daily sales of about 190,000 units.
That would be 18 million Galaxy SIII in a quarter... while analysts are pegging Samsung at 60 million total smartphones for the quarter.
So what were the other 42 million Samsung smartphones?
Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note II might make up 1/3 of Samsung's sales... but what on Earth makes up the rest? Are they not proud of those sales?
Yeah, Apple must have a tiny share of the profit share, that's why they must be coy about the product mix. /s
Give up, with the feeble excuses.
(Edit: Added a sentence).